Blindsided by the Taliban by Carmen Gentile

Author:Carmen Gentile
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781510729704
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2018-02-21T05:00:00+00:00

It’s not as if I never get out of bed now. Why just moments ago I was upright and outside, willingly enduring the biting January cold. The tip of my nose still feels frosty as I lie here in my underwear with the heat cranked up to 80.

My ex and I had arranged to meet in my hotel’s lobby not fifteen minutes ago so she could give the engagement ring back to me. When I arrived downstairs she’s already there, bundled in a bulky parka I’ve never seen her wear, as most of our courtship was relegated to sunny South Florida.

She mustered a faint “Hey” when I entered the lobby. I shrugged my shoulders, then suggested we go outside and sit in her car rather than conduct our impromptu un-engagement ceremony in a lobby full of strangers.

We sat in her silver Miata, shivering, each of us trying to figure out what was worth saying, if anything.

She looked me over.

“It’s not bad,” she said of my eye, which is especially red and irritated today due to the cold and wind.

I stared straight ahead while seated in the passenger seat, uncertain of the protocol for reacquiring an engagement ring. But before I can ask for it, my ex had a request of her own.

“Oh, can you write me a check for the storage space? Your end comes out to $200,” she informed me, having decided that I should pay for more of it because my boxes of books and clothes—which were supposed to one day be in a home we share—take up more space than her stuff.

“I’ll write you a check,” I told her.

With nothing else to distract us from the task at hand, she dug through her purse for the black box containing the engagement ring I gave her last year when she came to Pittsburgh to meet my family. She handed it to me and I stared at it for a moment, then started saying something I already regretted midsentence.

“I can’t … I can’t do this,” she said interrupting me, staring straight ahead, gripping the wheel tightly as if steering the parked car required all her concentration.

A deep hurt swelled in my belly. I turned away so as not to show her the pained look on my face. I got out of the car and watched her pull away, turn left onto 14th Street, and disappear.

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