Broken Carts ✔️

Aisle 33: Duet

Ezra's hotel room on the twentieth floor was littered with empty bottles. "Excuse the mess," he said as he started to collect them. "If you weren't already aware, I was experiencing emotional turmoil and chose to treat the pain via irresponsible self-medication."

"How are you not dead?" I asked upon seeing an empty bottle of Svedka nestled against an empty bottle of Jack.

"At this point, I can only assume I'm immortal."

For possibly the first time, neither of us even suggested drinking that night. Instead, we opened the huge window overlooking the Canadian side of the falls, sat on opposite sides of the wide sill with our legs outstretched, and just started talking.

I told him about getting kicked out, Florida, and Brighton. He listened intently, only adding comments here and there, until I started to dive into my issues with Vinny.

"I never, ever, tried to force him to stay around," Ezra assured me in harsh tones. "The car excuse is such bullshit— I drove his car home from a party because he got too drunk, and I kept hearing shit rattling around. I told him one time he should get it fixed, and he laughed it off. So I dropped it." He nearly rolled his eyes to the back of his head. "What kind of a selfish idiot does he think I am?"

"Apparently one that 'never changes,'" I said with air quotes. "I'm not going to lie, though. He really got in my head when he said that."

"Sounded like it."

I cleared my throat. "You never were conspiring against me to get me to stay around, were you?"

"Was I conspiring against you? No way. Wouldn't know how. Was I being exceptionally pushy about what I wanted deep down? Definitely." Ezra cast his gaze away. "And I'm sorry for that."

"You confused the shit out of me," I told him bluntly. "One day you wanted me to leave you alone forever, the next, you were trying to convince me I didn't need to go..."

The grimace on Ezra's face communicated disgust at his actions. "I didn't know how to handle you. My brain was a war zone from the night we met, telling me to keep you close, and then saying I should push you away."

"Why?"

"Because I've never had someone come into my life out of fucking nowhere and make me wish, more than anything, I could be better." The moonlight streaming in through the window split his face in half.

"So that's why you wrote that list in your notebook? Because you want to 'be better?'" He looked at me blankly. I bent down to grab my jacket from the floor. In the pocket was his notebook.

"You ransacked my room while I was gone," he said as I handed it to him.

"Finding it was an accident. The article that was on your ceiling was gone, so I looked for it under your bed."

"I took that shit down. Didn't like staring at it anymore." Ezra flipped to the back of the book and peered down at the list. "You read this and realized I wasn't such a loser, huh?"

"Something like that," I admitted.

"Man, guess I should've shown this to Vinny," joked Ezra.

I hesitated before asking, "Did you know he thought such shitty things about you?"

Ezra closed the book and shrugged. "He always acted like he was better than me. It only got worse as time went on."

"Why did you hook up with him for so long, then?"

He sucked his lips into his teeth and looked out the window. "I was desperate as hell for validation. And even more desperate to hurt."

"What do you mean, 'hurt?'"