Seven Years Apart.

“Shit.” Jamie's eyes widened, seeing his message on Siggy's phone screen. He hadn't meant for her to see that text—the text where he told her how much he hated her.     “f**k you,” she cried. Her voice increased in volume after each word. “I’m not the one sending hateful texts. I didn’t make you move back to Houston. I haven’t bothered you in seven years. You don’t know s**t about me. And you don’t have to remind me how often you hate me. I already remind myself, so f**k off.”     Jamie had met Siggy’s anger before. It was an understatement when her own family labeled her as hot-headed. However, he had never felt it directed at him. During their last encounter, he was the one yelling while she cried and begged for his forgiveness.     Then he remembered what it felt like the first month after they broke up, and the second month after that. It was as if an invisible rope slowly choked him. But the worst month of all was the seventh month. A sense of hopelessness made every day seem like the end of his life. It took longer to recover, yet he never fully did.     Was it better or worse without her? He was afraid to discover what would happen if she reached the exit and he never saw her again. It was too much of a risk.     “Stop,” he pulled her by the waist and closed the door.     “I’m out of your life. What else do you want?” she jolted.     He continued to pull her in, so she swung her hand across his face. The pulsating cheek wasn’t a concern.     “Let me go!” she yelled.     He lurched the pain and bundled her body against the wall. Their eyes locked immediately. He hadn’t seen that tint of green in a long time. Perhaps she felt about his eyes the same way he felt about hers because she stopped fighting.     “Now that I got you to stay, I don’t know what to do,” he whispered.     She leaned her head closer and took over his lips. At first, the action was slow and sensual, then they breathed faster and every movement turned into pleasurable violence.     He wrapped her legs around his hips, carried her into the living room, and dropped her on the couch. Her hand pulled on his belt buckle as if it was her life on the line, and his fingers yanked every piece of clothing off her.     "This is wrong," she moaned as he lowered himself between her limbs. "You have a girlfriend."     “It is and I know,” he whispered, devouring one of her n*****s.     “You hate me,” she opened her thighs wider and lifted her hips.     “I do,” he grunted as he rammed himself inside her.     Siggy didn't want to question his statement. He was insane, but she was insane, too. For seven years, she only dreamed about him, and now she was reliving the past. *** Four hours ago, I hate you, Siggy.     Jamie sighed at the letter art in his old high school sketchpad. The fine and clean strokes reminded him of the intensity of his feelings. As his anger grew, the lines became thicker but more precise.     Shaking his head, he closed shut the sketchpad and dumped it in the trash bag beside him. His eyes never let go of it. He wondered if Siggy hated him as much as he did now. But a half-naked woman walked into his bedroom and pulled him out of his thoughts. She held a porcelain figurine of a cow by her hip.     “You can’t say no to this one, Jamie,” she lifted the figurine by her cheek.     “Ugh, Valeria Relish, your obsession with vintage is an addiction. You need an intervention,” Jamie threw himself back on a twin-sized bed.     Valeria tilted her head, placed the cow on the floor, and slipped her black panties down to her knees. Jamie sat up with a smirk and pulled her hips to his chest.     “We’re never cleaning out my parent’s house, are we?” he kissed her navel.     “Moving in together was the best idea you’ve ever had,” she bit his lower lip and guided his hand over her breast.     Sounds of a scuffle ruined the mood. They frowned at each other, and Jamie glanced toward the window.     “f*****g Sigrid!” a man yelled.     Jamie’s eyebrows imploded. He shoved Valeria aside and bolted out of the bedroom.     As the front door closed behind him, he scurried through a trail into a cul-de-sac. Where the sidewalk curved, a small crowd gathered around a man and a woman.     “Come on, I give you permission to punch a girl.”     Jamie’s heartbeat raised at Siggy’s voice. He felt a pressure around his head. Seven years had passed since the last time he saw her, and although he hated her, there was a part of him that wanted to see her. He jostled through the crowd, finding a girl with long black hair and rainbow-colored tennis shoes with her fists held up in front of her chin. She took quick steps left and right, ready to fight. He recognized her opponent, her cousin Alexander, who was bigger back in high school, but still bigger than Sigrid now.     “You asked for it, Sigrid!” Alexander leaped toward Sigrid and aimed his fist at her.     “No,” Jamie tackled the enraged man onto the grass.     Both men tousled as Jamie felt multiple arms pulling him back up.     “Woah, woah, calm down,” he heard voices within the group.     “Jamie,” Siggy appeared beside him.     Jamie’s eyelids tried to escape from his face. He pushed his short brown hair away from his forehead. It felt surreal to see the woman that haunted his dreams in the flesh.     “Dude, what was that?” Alexander barked.     “I thought you were goin'a hit-er,” Jamie replied.     “Yeah, she deserves it,” a blonde girl walked into view. She was another one of Sigrid’s cousins. Actually, Jamie recognized everyone in the group as part of Siggy’s family, who owned all houses in the cul-de-sac, except his.     “How ’bout I put my fist through your mouth after I’m done with him?” Siggy yelled at the girl.     “That’s it. You’re out of control,” Alexander’s veins popped.     “Hey, hey!” Jamie pulled Siggy behind him.     “You just got here, Jamie. You don’t know what she’s done. She f*****g totaled my truck.”     “Should’ve thought about it before removing the insurance,” Siggy mocked him.     “Okay,” Jamie turned around and held Siggy’s shoulders, “don’t add wood to the fire.”     A confused Valeria moved inside the circle. She was wearing an oversized t-shirt and jean shorts.     “Jamie, what’s happening?” She stared at her new neighbors.     Jamie dropped his arms. “Val-eria.”     Siggy’s eyebrow twitched, and her feet took two steps back.     “This is—” Jamie jerked his head toward Siggy. Calling her an ex-girlfriend might not sound right in his girlfriend's mind. “These are my childhood neighbors.”     The voice of an older woman coming out of the house across the street halted any further questions from Valeria.     “All this fighting is making me... Oh, my God, is that Jamie Hackett?” Siggy’s mother clung onto Jamie’s neck and gave him a loud kiss on the cheek.     “Hi Mrs. Melnik,” Jamie replied shyly.     “You know, when your parents told me you were buying their house from them and moving in with your girlfriend, I was so relieved,” said the short woman. “I hate having to meet new neighbors. You never know if the guy living next to you is a registered s*x offender.”     “Don’t start, Tetya. The man got here yesterday,” Alexander rolled his eyes.     “It’s a valid concern. When I was born in Yugoslavia...”     “Wait, ya'll knew he was back?” Siggy blurted.     A breeze cut through the sudden silence. Some spectators cleared their throat or acted as if something distracted them. Siggy’s pale skin tone turned into pink patches. Her eyes glanced at Jamie, then quickly at a concrete pathway which she followed, stomping into her house. *** Valeria yanked Jamie’s arm before he reached the front door of their house. “Why did that girl react that way? Why don’t you want to talk about this?”     “Valeria, it’s Sunday. I’m tired. It’s not that important,” Jamie strode inside the house.     “It’s not important?” her jaw dropped at his evading response. “It obviously affected you. Do you think I’m stupid?”     “No, I don’t think you’re stupid,” he looked up to the ceiling and rubbed his face. “It was just awkward because...” he stared at the palm of his hand, trying to tell the quickest story with the least amount of details, “... we dated for like a semester in high school. I was seventeen. She was fifteen. We were both dumb and the entire relationship was dumb. There.”     “Okay? If it was so dumb, then why did she storm out like that?” Valeria crossed her arms.     “Aren’t you the one who told me you can’t stand any of your ex-boyfriends? People hold grudges against their ex’s all the time.”     Valeria exhaled, acknowledging her own irrational jealousy. She interlaced her fingers with his and kissed him on the lips.     “Would you forgive me for being a jealous girlfriend of the third kind?”     Jamie snickered, but not for the reasons his girlfriend thought. “More like a jealous girlfriend of the fourth kind. The one that stabs you in your sleep.”     “Babe,” she smacked him slightly on the chest.     In return, he smacked her buttock and sucked on her neck. All while relieved that she didn’t pester with more questions. Her moans meant she had believed him.     “We can’t,” she said hastily and placed her hand on her forehead.     “What did I miss?” he watched her run into the living room and grab her phone from the coffee table.     “Crap. I just forgot I have an intervention in an hour.”     “On a Sunday?”     “Yes, sorry. Our client wanted us to do it tonight. Something about Sunday dinner is supposed to make the entire thing more significant. I need to take a shower,” she ran upstairs and into the bathroom.     With his girlfriend gone and an empty house, Jamie stood in his old room, picking up more trash and labeling boxes of things he wanted to keep.     A gush of air from the ceiling fan lifted a corner of the curtain, and for a moment, he could see part of Siggy’s house. It seemed the Melniks had recently changed the roof and repainted the walls, but they hadn’t changed the structure. It was the same yellow house with an American flag hanging over the porch and three garden gnomes standing between the bushes.     He pondered about what Siggy was doing and if she was even there. Sometimes, if the Melniks weren’t home, they were across the street with their cousins. He always envied their enormous family.     She probably never thought about him. After what she did to him, he found it hard to believe that she ever cared about him. The last day he spoke to... yelled at her before moving to college, he unleashed a demon of pain. It was all a haze, but he felt there was more he wished he would’ve said to her.     He spotted the trash bag with the sketchpad in it and kicked it so hard it bursted open in midair, scattering its contents on the laminate floor.     “f**k!” he became angrier and pulled his smartphone out of his pocket.     He scrolled down a list of his contacts and as he suspected, he never deleted Siggy’s number. In seven years, she must have changed her phone number multiple times, just as he had. But he wasn’t sending a message to the present; he was sending a message to the past.     When I saw you today, it reminded me of how much I hate you, Sigrid. Things could’ve been so different if you would’ve kept your promises. I didn’t forgive you then, and I won’t forgive you now. Sometimes I thought about your body under mine, and when reality hit me, it made me want to die, but I will not let you ruin my life anymore. Get out of my f*****g brain!!!!     He sat on the floor and dropped the phone on his lap. It was relieving to press the ‘send’ button. Surely, that phone number belonged to someone else. Siggy couldn’t have kept it for the whole seven years. An old man was probably sitting in his South Texas home, reading the text while scratching his head. That made Jamie laugh. ***     Hunger pierced Jamie’s stomach, prompting him to rummage the fridge for the quickest snack. It was too late, and he was too lazy to turn on the stove. His appetite for leftover pizza was left unattended as he directed his attention to sudden pounding sounds. He peeked over the refrigerator door toward the entrance.     He placed his eye by the main door’s peephole and blinked a few times in disbelief. Siggy was standing outside, knocking on his door. He couldn’t see her face because she was staring at her shoes, but he was sure it was her. Frozen in place, he did nothing but watch. His consciousness fought his hand to keep the door locked.     What if she needs medical help? Said his stupid heart.     As the lock turned, Siggy barged into the house with swollen eyes and disheveled hair. She shoved her phone screen at his face.     Why did the woman he hated the most in the world had to be so damn beautiful?     In seven years she hadn’t changed her phone number. He was nervous. His fingers, down by his hips, tried to hide it.