Exit Wounds | Noah Sebastian

T W O

When I hear Caleb stumble in I glance at the clock, it's three in the morning.  I huff a sigh as I hear him knocking things over in the kitchen.  Things were not always like this, when we first met we were going out every weekend, closing down the bar and then talking until the sun came up.

I was a girl obsessed, I couldn't get enough of him.  I was calling our mutual friend every night to see if Caleb would be there.  If he was I was there.  If he wasn't coming I made time for Finn.  I knew that I was in love with him the first night we snuck away from a party to talk on the balcony.  By the time we went back inside everyone had gone home and it was just us left.

We had our first kiss in a crowed bar, the music was loud and the beer was free until 11 and the smoke was thick in the air.  When his lips met mine everything fell away, the people, the music, the smoke.  It was just us.

We had kissed, sure, but we were friends. In fact, he was my best friend.  We texted from sun up to sundown, I wanted to know everything, and we never ran out of things to talk about.  If I'm honest, we still haven't run out of things to talk about, we just spend our energy in different places now.

I brought him to meet my friends for a weekend camping trip. I lost my shirt on a canoe trip that weekend, and I got to see someone I wanted to spend my life with bond with my friends. I wasn't worried that they'd get along, or that he would say something stupid. I knew everything with meld together.

I got violently ill after that trip. I didn't see Caleb for three weeks, and that was a big deal because I had been seeing him once a week for several months at this point. When I was finally feeling up to going out, we met at our usual spot. I had arrived to find Caleb with another girl. I wasn't jealous, in fact we had both spoken about having lots of female friends and male friends.

I had never been jealous of another girl in my life. I had never had any reason to feel insecure, I was attractive and didn't have any body image issues. I talked and joked with this Leslie. I befriended her, and genuinely thought nothing about it.

Until I went to the bathroom, and came back to find her in his lap. He hadn't done anything wrong, we were friends who kissed sometimes. However, I had never felt betrayal like that before. It took all of my strength to not cry in front of him, to cry in a crowded bar.

I picked myself up and found some friends that weren't friends with him and I managed to make it through the night. I met another guy, I pretended to forget about Caleb. I stopped all contact with him and our shared friends. If he didn't want to be with me, that was fine, but I couldn't just be his friend. Also, my pride was hurt.

I didn't speak to him for another month, until I broke down on his birthday and told him happy birthday.

Caleb was a different guy after that. He only paid attention to me, and spent months making up for hurting me. He knew, even without my telling him how I felt about it.

I knew he slept with her, but it was okay because he chose me.

Caleb chose me. And I chose Caleb.

Caleb and I had only officially been together a month when we decided to move in together. We lived pretty far away from each other, him being on the north side of Nashville and me being on the south side.

I'm not exaggerating when I said no one was more in love than us. We held hands, and kissed in public. Leslie was still around but it didn't matter, because I was with Caleb. And it was never about winning him, it was about being with him. I knew I loved him from the beginning.

We moved into a small apartment in Nashville, central to our jobs. Caleb finished school, and then I finished my degree. We were this incredible team and we could always lean on the other for support. We moved into a bigger, downtown apartment before the market blew up. Things started to change. Caleb worked late, and went in early. He's always here and I'm always there. We can't get on the same page.