The Throwaway Year (8 page)

~***~

On Tuesday, Hayden had interval training with Todd at the gym.  While she did not fall off the treadmill, she did beg him with her eyes to allow her to stop before her lungs flew out of her mouth.  However, he had no mercy. He kept his hand on the speed button moving it up when it was time for her to sprint and then back to a medium walk for the next three minutes. He made her keep doing those intervals for an entire half an hour!

At the end
, she didn’t speak; she just stumbled to the lockers where she puked up her morning oatmeal into the toilet. When she walked back into the main area of the gym, Todd was waiting for her with bottled water. She never bought the bottled water when there was a water faucet that she could use for free, but she took the peace offering while he watched her meekly.

“Are you okay?”

She nodded. “I got sick, but yeah, I’m okay.”

“It’s your breathing; you’re going to have to learn to regulate it.
You have to find your second wind.”

She huffed.
“It didn’t seem like it wanted to be found.” She knew what he was talking about. When she rode the bike, there was a point at about fifteen minutes in when she thought that she would keel over and die, but if she pushed on it would suddenly get easier and her legs would begin pedaling madly until she hit the wall and found her
third
wind.

Later, a
s Hayden’s day moved on, it seemed to go from bad to worse. She was late getting to work because she made the mistake of going through the drive through at McDonald’s for more oatmeal. Unfortunately, the line was slow and long. She ended up being ten minutes late to work and by the time she had a chance to eat; the oatmeal was a cold, hard lump that she dumped into her trashcan.

Then by the time lunch came,
she was starving but had packed only a chef salad, not even half a sandwich or a fruit cup to go along with it. She was staring into her empty bowl wishing for seconds when Dani invited her to the Jazz Festival. The Jazz Festival was a big deal in her city.

The top R&B singers and groups were sure to appear.
Then of course, there would be the old-time groups that never went out of style like Frankie Beverly and Maze and Patti Labelle. It was something that she and MyKell had attended every summer.

Hayden’s life had been running smoothly not counting the week directly following her breakup with MyKell when she’d had her meltdown.
Beyond that, she had coped with the end of a six-year relationship with as much detachment as she could muster. Yet every bit of ground that she had gained in the last two months was thrown out the window at the mention of the Jazz Festival. The realization that she would never go to the Jazz Festival with MyKell again first stunned, and then hurt her so deeply that it was like being bowled over.

MyKell would go to the Jazz Festival with someone else…
  It was over. He wasn’t coming back. He was no longer a part of her life.

Hayden could have clutched her chest as the pain of it sank in
for her. The sudden grief brought swift stinging tears to her eyes and she could no longer speak. All she could do was look away and shake her head, praying that the tears filling her eyes didn’t fall.

Dani gasped.
“Oh Hayden, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to… I just want you to have fun. You’re so much better off without that asshole! Don’t you know how much he used you for your kindness? So he moved on to some other woman that he can use up. Good riddance!”

Oh my God
… Hayden didn’t want to have this conversation. Not when the tears were welling up in her eyes and they were sitting in the break room with their co-workers.  However, Hayden had lost the ability to use her voice and didn’t know how to tell her friend to stop. Just stop…

“Look, Hayden, if you change your mind just let me know, okay?” Dani touched her hand and Hayden just nodded her head. Dani quickly changed the subject and
Hayden was grateful that a moment later her tears receded.

After the
ir lunch break, Hayden went back to her desk, too afraid that if she stopped at the restroom the tears would return. She stared at her computer screen hands slack in her lap. 
There is no joy in my life. This is all…

~***~

Hayden had stopped at McDonald’s again on her way to Fox Vinyl. She ordered a large chocolate shake, a double quarter pounder with cheese and a super sized order of fries with two apple pies.  Her stomach ached terribly by the time that she entered the building.

Not because she had eaten all of that fast food, but because she had thrown it out the window and now her stomach felt like an empty cavern.
She never packed an evening meal because she wouldn’t have time to spare reheating a packed meal for dinner when she had one hour from the end of one job and the beginning of the next. So there was no way that she could survive on sandwiches and salads all week long for each of her three meals. Dinner was the time that she splurged on carryout; either a roast chicken dinner from Boston Market, or Italian Wedding Soup from the deli, and if she was lucky, the roast turkey special from The Cracker Barrel.

S
he’d blown that though…

Hayden walked into the little canteen for the first time since being an employee of Fox Vinyl, her stomach making sounds that unnerved her.
It was worse than she had imagined. No surprise that the ashtrays and trashcans were overflowing but the floor was sticky. She didn’t have to open the microwave to see that it was totally filthy… she could smell it! It smelled like… Abdullah.

The tables appeared to have been cleaned with a dirty sponge.
She couldn’t even smell the Pine Sol that she had used on all of the surfaces when she was the cleaning lady. Did the new person even use disinfectant?

Hayden couldn’t hide the grimace on her face as she headed for the vending machines.
She carefully studied the contents but there was absolutely nothing even remotely healthy inside of any of them. She finally settled on two cartons of orange juice. She would have gone for a carton of skim milk but couldn’t see the expiration date and something told her that she really shouldn’t trust the milk in the vending machine.

She was about to leave when she saw Brian waving at her from a table where he sat alone smoking a cigarette.
  She waved back and he gestured for her to come over. Well, why not? She never took breaks and everyone else got up at least once an hour. Mr. Fox didn’t seem to have a policy concerning breaks—evidenced by the amount that Pam took.

“Hey Hayden.”

She sat down across from him. “Hi Brian, how’s it going?”

“Pretty good.”
He picked up his pack of cigarettes and offered her one.

She shook her head.
“No thank you. I don’t smoke.”

He took a last puff and then smashed it into the ashtray, turning his head to blow the smoke away from her.
She opened one of the cartons of OJ and downed it hungrily. Her stomach groaned loudly and Brian gave her a shocked look.

“Oh, I’m sorry!
That was just my stomach!”

He smiled in amusement.
“Yeah, you’re hungry.”

She shrugged but was happy to see him smiling.
He always appeared so somber, and when he smiled it changed his face completely. He was too pale, too thin, but suddenly he was also kind of cute.

“I didn’t have time for dinner,” she explained.

“Orange juice for dinner?”

“Well…
I’m trying to eat healthy. So…”

“Ah.
Right. There is nothing healthy to be found in this room.”

She opened the second carton but was a bit more ladylike as she took a small swallow.
“I hear there’s going to be a big bonus in a few weeks. A thousand bucks,” she said.

“They do it every month, or something close to it.”

“I bet you’ve won it a few times.”

He smiled and looked down.
“No. I’ve only been doing sales for a few weeks.”

She frowned at him, not believing what he was telling her.
He knew too much about everything.

He noticed her look.
“Well, I’ve been with Fox for years but not telemarketing. I delivered the phonebook covers and…” his voice softened.  “Sometimes I’d pick up the money from the customers or just… whatever needed to be done.”

She was curious about Mr. Fox and why he came down so hard on
Brian. However, Hayden had no intention of being nosey.

“Do you like working here?”

His eyes flitted away before settling back on her. 

“Not really.”
He looked at the clock above the door. “I better get back.”

“Yeah, me too.”

She followed him back to the work area, checking the board for sales as she headed to her desk. She slumped down into her chair and was trying to concentrate on the phonebook when she caught a movement in front of her desk. She looked up in time to see Brian heading back across the aisle to his own desk. She looked at him curiously before noticing that there was a big golden delicious apple on the corner of her desk sitting on top of her inbox.

A smile tugged at her lips and when Brian sat dow
n and looked at her she mouthed, “thank you.” He nodded and put the remainder of his bag lunch in one of his desk drawers.  She picked up the apple and rubbed it on her pants before taking a big bite. She decided that she liked working at Fox Vinyl.

Long after the apple was eaten, Hayden’s head was buried in the phonebook and she was lost in thought.
Unfortunately, they weren’t work related thoughts. She hadn’t made a sale all night and she only had an hour left on her shift. She just couldn’t seem to get it together. Instead of seeing the businesses listed on the pages, she kept thinking thoughts that were best left buried.

Like
, what did that other woman look like; the one that MyKell preferred over her? Did he miss Hayden at all? Did he even think about her?

She was struggling with these thoughts when she felt someone standing in front of her desk.
She looked up to the sight of Marcus. He was smiling at her.

“I was just checking that you hadn’t fallen asleep sitting there.
You’ve been looking at that same page for five minutes.”

How would he know unless he was watching her for five minutes?
She offered him a weak smile and then returned to the phonebook, making a point to turn the page. When he didn’t leave she looked up again.

He leaned down and spoke in a semi-low voice.
“Look, I don’t mean any disrespect but you look very down and if you need a pick me up, you just let me know. I have pills or weed or whatever, okay?”

“Oh.”
Her eyes widened. “Okay…”

He winked and walked away.

Her brow furrowed. Good God, what was she going to do about this man trying to push drugs on her? She didn’t want to have to deal with this every freaking day, especially with everything else that she was dealing with. She closed her eyes and tried to think of one of the affirmations that she had saved on her laptop, but she could not bring even one of them to mind.

Hayden had given into her tears as she lay curled in bed later that night, calling them for what they were; tears of loneliness and shame.
She was ashamed that she still loved MyKell and disgusted that she wanted him to beg her for forgiveness. She would forgive him too because living with her weakness was far better than the feeling of rejection that lay curdling inside of her belly.

She blinked her eyes and sat up in bed.
No, that wasn’t really true. She would
not
take MyKell Juarez back. She sat frozen as she analyzed and found that to be a definitive fact.

If he even put his hands on her
now, she would hurl and the idea of him inside of her body was beyond disgusting. Hayden’s heart leapt in excitement as she realized that this was the truest feeling that she had experienced all day. She turned on her lamp as she counted all of the things that she despised about her ex. The list was much longer than the things that she liked about him.

She huffed, and wiped the tears from her cheeks.
He was a cheap man who had no problems having her take care of him. Him finding someone else was probably a blessing because now he was someone else’s problem. Besides, she hadn’t felt any sense of respect for the man in years. She couldn’t even pinpoint the exact moment that she had stopped taking pride in him and had internalized her dislike of him.

Oh my God
… she didn’t like MyKell and hadn’t liked him in years. Hayden cradled her face in her hands.
Things hadn’t been right for a long time
… MyKell knew it and now she could admit it too.

Hayden jumped out of bed, not even sure what time it was
, only knowing that it was late and that she should be asleep. Yet she wouldn’t be able to do that until she got on her laptop and found something that she had read in her list of affirmations. In this moment of her life, there was nothing truer than those words…