The Story of a Man, A Woman, and the Corpses of 1000 Evil Students

It was the hardest thing I had ever done in my life. It was as if there was a gaping hole in my chest. Gerard was sitting in his study when I made my way in there to have the talk with him. From the moment I walked in there, he knew something was wrong. He stood up when I walked in.

“We need to talk,” I began. He pulled me into his arms for a kiss. I didn’t resist, because his kisses were the best feeling in the world. There was a hint of desperation in his kiss, and it made my heart sink. “I’m sorry.”

He spent the next two minutes holding me on his lap as he sat on the corner of his desk, running his hands up and down my back, my thighs, my arms. “I love you,” he said over and over into my ears with the sweetest sadness.

“I need to leave,” I said slowly. The next movements happened in slow motion for me. With painful slowness, his hands fell from me. I looked up into his face, and his eyes were widening with betrayal. His mouth opened and closed several times before I couldn’t stand it anymore. “You deserve better.”

“Don’t,” he said, his voice thick with pain. All I could do was stare up at him. Tears were pooling in the wells of my eyes, I couldn’t help it any longer.

“I’m sorry. You don’t need this. You don’t need me. I can’t keep bringing you down-”

“Do you realize what you’re saying right now?” Gerard asked, more of a statement than a question. “You’re leaving?”

“Gerard, I’ve just been doing a lot of thinking. You have a lot going on in your life and you have your own list of problems and all I do is add to it. I can’t keep asking you to put everything aside and deal with me.” I had to keep looking down at my feet because I couldn’t stand the look on his face. “This is going to sound cliche, but it’s not you.”

“Charlotte,” Gerard began but I heard his voice catch. “If this is what you want.”

It wasn’t what I wanted, not at all. But it was what I had to do. If I hadn’t come along in his life, Gerard probably wouldn’t be on this downward spiral of blacking out at parties and pulling his hair out in his studio with frustration. “You don’t need to be worried constantly that your girlfriend is going to kill herself. I want better for you.” I finally looked back up at him. His eyes were red with unshed tears and he was breathing heavily as if he was in pain. He was in pain, though, and it was my fault. He would be in more pain if I stayed, though.

“But I want you to be okay,” Gerard said quietly.

“I want you to be okay.”

“Can we just make this temporary? Can this not be permanent? Please,” he begged. I weighed it in my mind; I hadn’t thought of a break over a breakup.

“Maybe. I don’t know right now. But I’m going to stay at Jessica’s for a while until I can sort my head out,” I explained. He pulled me into his arms again and I felt him slowly nod.

“Whatever will make you happy,” he said finally, breaking my heart once again. “I just want you to be happy.”

“I want you to be happy, but you’re never going to be happy while I’m around. I’m sorry.” I gave him a kiss on his cheek as I backed up to the door, grabbing my duffel bag I had packed that morning. “Please be safe.”

As I was walking down his apartment building’s hallway, I heard him say one last thing.
“Remember that I love you.”


Jessica welcomed me into her apartment with open arms and a pint of chocolate chocolate chip ice cream. “I’m sorry, Charlie,” she had said when she wrapped me in a hug before ushering me inside out of the hallway. “I’m sorry it’s not cleaner in here, but I’ve been cramming for midterms and also trying to pack for spring break. I’m going to Mexico, but if you still need somewhere to stay in a week you can definitely stay here while I’m gone.”

She had made up a bed on the couch for me, which I dove into amid a river of tears. After thanking her, she went back to her room to study and I just laid on my back, staring up at the ceiling. I wondered what Gerard was going to do for spring break. I wondered if this really was going to be temporary. I grabbed the bottle of wine I had packed in my duffel bag and uncorked it, drinking straight from the bottle. This was going to be an interesting few weeks.

I had gotten to Jessica’s apartment at around nine at night and it was easily a quarter to four in the morning before I felt any inkling of exhaustion. I’d taken all my sleeping aids and downed an entire bottle of wine, which explained why my head was spinning like I was riding a corkscrew coaster. Jessica had long gone to bed and I was sitting up, trying to focus on the news without throwing up. I wanted to keep the alcohol down, because it was blurring the edges of everything, especially my emotions and my pain.

I wondered what Gerard was doing right now.

I wondered if I was doing the right thing.


Class the next day was interesting. My eyes were nervously darting around campus, as if I expected to see Gerard everywhere all at once. My hangover was legendary, but at least Jessica had anticipated that and sent me off to class with a bottle of ibuprofen and a gallon of water I was lugging around awkwardly. Everywhere I looked, there were couples happy in love, rubbing their noses together and holding hands on stone benches, chirping about their spring break plans.

I didn’t care about the rules; I lit up a cigarette on the edge of the quad and inhaled deeply, burning the back of my throat. I struggled to keep a cough down when I saw a familiar figure across the quad heading my direction. When I met Frank’s eyes, he gave me a short wave before walking up to me.

“Hate to bother you, but I’ll get in trouble unless I pretend to be talking to you about how you can’t smoke here.” He had dark circles under his eyes, his usual joyful demeanor vacant. “You doing okay?”

I looked up at him for a few seconds before bursting into silent sobs, bending over at my waist and spilling my tears onto my boots. The bench creaked as he sat down next to me, lightly placing a hand on my back.

“I’m sorry,” was all he said. I couldn’t reply because I was quietly gasping for air, trying to avoid a scene. Thank god I had worn sunglasses. My chest felt like it was being ripped apart at the seams. Everything hurt. I remembered this feeling from the first time Anthony had broken up with me; I thought I was dying or having a heart attack, or both. I never wanted to live through that pain again, but I had done it half a dozen more times with the same boy. And now, it was a hundred times worse. Because I knew this pain was self inflicted, and I was probably also inflicting this pain on somebody I loved more than all the stars in the sky.

“Is he here today?” I managed to choke out as I sat up, trying to clean my face of tears. I saw Frank shake his head out of the corner of my eye and felt the tiniest wave of relief spread through me, along with a bitter feeling of disappointment. After sitting with me in silence for a few moments more, Frank rose to his feet.

“You know where to find me if you need to talk,” he said with another pat on my shoulder before he set back off across campus. My cigarette was on the ground, burnt out. Just like me. I was probably going to have to stop talking to Frank, too, because all he did was remind me of Gerard. But then again, everything reminded me of Gerard.

Like those two seats at that one table in the right corner of the market’s dining area patio. The drainage pipe that gazed down with a watchful gaze at the city. The CD in my car with a playlist of songs he claimed reminded him of me. Anything somewhat related to art. People with black hair. The color black. People.

It hadn’t even been twenty-four hours and I was constantly checking my phone to see if he had called or texted me. He hadn’t. He probably wouldn’t, because he had told me he respected what I wanted. But this isn’t what I wanted! My head was screaming.



The days didn’t get any easier. Jessica was super supportive at first, but I could tell her patience was growing thinner every time I started crying. Eventually Friday came, and she was off to the airport in a few hours. I’d gone out for a run and she had been blaring music when I walked in the door. After a few moments, though, the music stopped, giving away to two voices talking. I froze as I recognized one as Jessica’s, and the other as someone else.

“I’m telling you, they broke up. She’s been with me for the past four days, believe me,” Jessica said over the sound of drawers slamming shut. It sounded like she was still packing.

“And you’re leaving tonight for Mexico?” I had been about to knock on Jessica’s door when I heard Anthony’s voice crackle over speaker phone.

“Yeah, so if you want to try and get her back tonight’s the night.”
I thought I was going to be sick. Fear flooded my veins as I took a few staggered steps backwards onto the couch and just turned the TV on automatically. I didn’t need to hear anything else. My best friend had been telling my stalker ex everything about my ex. That was how he knew where I worked. How he knew I was dating Gerard. And he knew I was going to be alone in her apartment that night. I fought the bile that was rising in my throat and sat numbly on the couch, staring at the fuzzy screen before realizing I should be getting my shit together and getting the fuck out of there.

About an hour later, Jessica came out of her room with her suitcases, sunglasses perched on top of her head. She shot me a confused look as she saw me stuffing my clothes into my duffel bag. “Going somewhere?”

I let out a nervous laugh. “Yeah, I’m actually going back home to visit my parents. Really last minute but they just called me and invited me for spring break.” To my surprise, Jessica rolled her eyes.

“Good. Thought you were going to keep sitting around here talking about how much pain you were in and how much of a martyr you were for breaking up with Way.” She left some keys on the table. “I’m off to the airport. If you need the keys, they’ll be here. Be good!”

She blew me a fake kiss before walking out the front door. That was the moment I ran to the bathroom and threw up.

After emptying the contents of my stomach into her toilet, I was sitting panting on the bathroom floor. I needed to get out of there. I had no idea if and/or when Anthony would be showing up here. As if on cue, my phone started to ring. As it did every time my phone made a buzzing noise, my heart leapt in hope of it being Gerard. It wasn’t. It was Frank.

“Hello?” I said, wiping the corners of my mouth with a tissue.

“Charlotte,” Frank said sternly. He never called me Charlotte, always Charlie. “I didn’t know who else to call-” I felt my heart rate quicken as he said those words, his voice breaking off into silence.

“What? Why? What happened?” I was marching out of the bathroom and grabbing my things as I asked him that, my mind going off in a million possibilities of what had happened.

“He’s not picking up his phone anymore. He said some...scary things. And I don’t know what to do,” he said the last part quickly.

“I’m heading over there now.” Frank was silent on the other end of the line. “I still have a key to his apartment.”

At that point, I didn’t care if I got a speeding ticket. I peeled out of the parking lot of Jessica’s apartment complex and onto the street before speeding to the freeway entrance. She lived about ten minutes away from him, but I needed to cut that time in half.

It felt like years before I was standing outside of his apartment, number 117, jiggling the key in the lock. My hands were shaking too hard for me to open it properly. Not only was I worried about the state he was in, I was worried about seeing him for the first time in four days. Which didn’t sound like a lot, but it felt like an eternity to me, after being in constant, unending communication with him for such a long time now.

By the time I swung the door open, I was sweating profusely. My veins felt like they were on fire. I threw my jacket off onto the entryway table, rushing into his apartment. The TV was askew on his media center, noisy black and white fuzz covering the entirety of it’s screen and filling the apartment with a static buzzing, mirroring the blood rushing through my ears. “Gerard.”

I heard something crash in the bathroom, and I dropped my bag and sprinted across the living room to open the door. My hand flew over my mouth in reaction to the sight I was met with.

Notes