Rebound

"Are you implying that I was a rebound?" she asked with increasing anger.

He shrugged, a mixture of indifference and concern displayed openly on his face.  "I guess so, yeah.  I mean, we started dating like a week after me and her broke up."

"Ugh!  I can't believe this!  You asshole!"  She started to storm out of the kitchen, and then turned around like she had forgotten something.  "You know what?  I can do so much better than you!"  She actually stormed out after that.

He grabbed his keys off of the counter and headed out to his car.  Honestly, he didn't care anymore.  She was right.  She could do better than him.  But not by much.

She slammed her bathroom door, turned on the shower and just sat in the bath tub.  As the water washed over her, she felt a strange combination of desperation and relief.  It was insane that she missed him already, but it was obvious to her now that she hadn't meant anything to him.

He knew that she would end up hating him, it had just happened a little sooner than he'd thought it would.  Well, it was over now, and there was nothing he could do about it.  He had gone in knowing the consequences and it would be stupid if he'd expected it to end any other way.

She'd been dumb to think that it would end anyway other than the way it had.  But at the time she had thought that he cared.  Looks like it was just another place she'd gone wrong.  The more she thought about it, the more upset she got.  Tears slipped down her cheeks, and she wished that he were there to wipe them away like he'd used to be.

He parked his car in the driveway and unlocked the front door.  "I'm back!" he yelled, but like always he was answered by the sound of video games filtering up from the basement.  He sighed, threw his keys on the counter and crawled into bed.

She finally stopped crying and shut off the shower.  It was like someone had flipped a switch.  One moment she had been sobbing uncontrollably and the next she was numb.  The only thing she felt now was tired.  She trudged to her bedroom, her drenched clothes weighting her down.  She begrudgingly changed into her pajamas and crawled into bed.