The Shattered Window

It’s Sunday and it’s raining in Los Angeles, which is rare. I’m smoking a cigarette and it’s not even 10 am. I hate cigarettes but Sloan loves them and I feel like an idiot standing in a downpour without good reason. I go back inside.

Sloan packed last night. I didn’t even wake up. Now all that’s left for her to do is walk out of my life forever. She grabs her stuff, turns to look at me but there’s nothing left to say. It’s all been said. The door slams and Sloan’s gone. The roar of silence rings in my ears. It’s going to be a dark December.

The story of Sloan is complicated. A smart 23-year-old psych major at UCLA, we met at a bookstore in Pasadena. Which means we really met on the Internet. From the moment I met her she was a walking disaster. A tornado of issues, distractions and neurosis…she seemed like the perfect candidate to become a future ex-girlfriend.

She flaked on the first three dates. Then one evening, she called and said, “I’m in your neighborhood.” Odd since I didn’t realize she knew where I lived. We went to a wine bar, hit it off and before I knew it we were spending a lot of time together. I told myself it was just a fling but each day after work, Sloan was there in my apartment flashing a million-watt smile and cooking some delicious experimental dish without a recipe.

Sloan’s eccentricities drove me crazy at first; like dumping the contents of her purse onto my floor to find misplaced items. Or trying to fix things by breaking them even worse. Until one day, after locking myself out of my apartment, Sloan tried to pry my window open and knocked it out instead. The window fell and shattered into a thousand pieces and I fell for Sloan. She was a helpless lost cause but her effort to make things right was irresistible. She looked up at me with sad eyes and said, “I’m so sorry…I’m just…not good…at life.” So blunt and so true. That was all it took to cement an unhealthy co-dependent relationship.

She moved in the same day and it crossed my mind briefly that she might be homeless. There are no background checks for relationships in Los Angeles but there should be. Sloan would have failed every portion of the screening process.