Page 5 of Use Me

Corey stood and took a step toward me. I stepped back, and he sighed. “Ash, I don’t want to hurt you, but I think that’s best. We’ve had a good thing going for a few months, but we want different things with our futures.”

“I thought you loved me.” A tear slid down my cheek.

“It was nice while it lasted.” He took another step, not confirming heoncetold me he did.

I took another step back. “While it lasted?”

He grinned. “You think you’re the only one I’m seeing?”

“What?” I shrieked.

“There are others, Ashtyn.”

“You told me you loved me.”

“I told you what you wanted to hear.”

More tears spilled from my eyes. “This isn’t a game.”

“Isn’t it though?”

“You’re thirty-seven. Wasn’t fucking around what your twenties were for?”

“We can go round and round about this. I’m sorry, but I’m moving on.”

“Get out!” I yelled and went to the door. I swung it open. “Get. Out!”

He grinned at me as he walked to the door. “I’ll call you tomorrow so I can come get my things.”

“You’ll be lucky if I don’t burn them,” I hissed.

“Not your style, baby.”

“Who are you right now?” This wasn’t the guy I’d been dating for the past several months. It was as though I’d been dating a psychopath.

He stopped and turned back around as I stood in the door frame of my condo. “Don’t you get it? I faked everything with you because you’re hot.”

And then he left.

I watched as the door clicked and then I crumpled to the wood floor, more tears sliding down my face as my heart broke in my chest. How was this happening? Why was this happening? A part of me felt as though it was my fault. I’d waited so long to try and settle down. My twenties were for me and my career, and I’d hoped my thirties were for me to start a family.

I was wrong.

Given that it was close to midnight, I crawled in the shower and cried some more. My tears mixed with the soap and water as they all went down the drain and out of my life.

Just like Corey.

After my self-loathing, I threw on my pajamas and cried myself to sleep.

When I woke the next morning, my green eyes were puffy, red, and swollen from all the salty tears and heartache I’d endured the night before. I still couldn’t believe that Corey had broken up with me, or that he’d told me he was just using me because I was good looking.

I fucking hated him.

While my coffee dripped into my mug, I went to the front door and grabbed the morning paper. Even though today was Saturday and I wasn’t working, I still had to keep up with everything going on in the world. I had to live and breathe news. As I glanced at the front page, a part of me expected to see a headline that read:

Breaking News: Ashtyn Valor and Corey Pritchett have called it quits.

But, of course, breakups didn’t make the morning news unless you were famous and I wasn’t. Except in Chicago, I guess, but I was just a local news anchor. In fact, I never spoke much about my dating life in public. I even went to last year’s Chicago/Midwest Emmy Awards alone because he had to work. Or at least that was what he’d told me. Now after everything he said to me, he was probably with another woman.