The Beautiful Monster

She grabbed her phone and called him again, feeling hot tears roll down her cheeks as she cried. She needed to hear from him.

She needed him to tell her that this wasn't real. When his phone went to voicemail, she waited for the beep.

"Elias? Where did you go? Your apartment is empty, and you won't talk to me. Did I do something wrong? Please call me. Please…" she cried into the phone before hanging up.

She couldn't stop the sobs that racked her body. She hadn't ever felt so alone before, and she knew the feeling would never go away until she saw Elias again. If she ever did.

***********

Tomorrow was graduation day. There would be parties and celebrations. There would be pride and joy.

There would be happiness. Now, all of that seemed so far away, so impossible to Alyssa as she laid on her bed in her dorm room.

She stared up at the ceiling. Her eyes were sore from crying so much.

She couldn't count how times she called and texted Elias. She filled up his voicemail box already.

She wondered if he was even reading her messages or listening to her voicemails. Was he even thinking about her and the pain that he caused her by doing this to her? She still couldn't think of a reason why.

Nothing made sense to her now. They were happy. They were coming out of the storm and approaching a new horizon.

Things were going to get better for them. She knew that they were, but he jumped ship. If he stayed away, he was even going to miss graduation.

She wondered if he just fell out of love with her and had been faking it.

All of the excitement that she felt for tomorrow was gone. Now, there was a hole in her chest, and she didn't know how to fill it.

Maybe she would never be able to. Elias had ripped her apart from the inside with a single word. Goodbye.

It seemed unlike him to just grab his things and run without a word to her. If he actually wanted to break up with her, he would've sat her down and talked to her.

That seemed like more of his style, but maybe she didn't know him at all. He was secretive. Maybe he was the type to run without a word. Maybe he was a coward.

A knock sounded on Alyssa's door, and she already knew who it was. She had gone through this before, and there was only one person who could help her through the pain until she was okay again.

She just wasn't convinced that she would actually be okay again after all of this. She wasn't even sure if she would be okay if Elias did come back after what he did.

How could she trust him when he just abandoned her like that?

She crawled out of bed slowly, feeling like bricks were weighing her down. Everything felt so hard to do, even getting out of bed.

She wouldn't mind just lying there and rotting. She knew that she told herself she wouldn't do that again back in her sophomore year, but she wasn't strong enough to act like everything was fine and go about her normal life. It felt like she wasn't strong enough for anything.

Alyssa opened her door to see Zoe standing there with a bottle of wine in one hand and a pizza box in the other.

"I shouldn't keep making you do this," she muttered as she stepped aside for Zoe to come again.

"Maybe I should've learned from the first time he broke my heart."

Zoe frowned as she set the bottle of wine and pizza box down on Alyssa's desk. She turned to Alyssa with a sigh.

"I'm… still in shock. I have no idea why he would just pack his things up and leave," she said as she shook her head.

Even Zoe had no words of advice because she was just as stumped by Elias' strange behavior. "I'm really sorry, Alyssa."

Alyssa nodded, offering a faint smile to Zoe. It was all she could muster right now. She twisted off the cap on the bottle of wine and brought it to her lips, taking a few deep sips to try to numb the pain that she felt. She didn't know what else to do to make it go away.

Zoe watched her with wide eyes before stepping forward and taking the bottle from her.

"Let's start with a glass," she said before walking over to Alyssa's cabinet and grabbing a cup.

She poured Alyssa a decent amount of mine before handing the cup over to her. She then grabbed a slice of the cheese pizza and handed it to Alyssa on a napkin.

Alyssa turned away from the pizza, not feeling hungry. She hadn't felt anything but pain since Elias left.

"No, you're eating. Then, you're talking," Zoe told her with a demanding tone. She put the pizza in Alyssa's had before guiding her over to sit on her bed.

She sat beside Alyssa, making her eat the entire slice. "I know it's hard, but you have to take care of yourself."

"What's the point?" Alyssa muttered. It was hard to see a point to anything right not because she was so down. All of the optimism and happiness that she had for the future were gone now.

She thought that she had a life partner. She thought that she didn't have to brave New York City and medical school by herself.

Now, all of her plans blew up in her face, and she had to figure things out all over again. It sounded like hell.

"The point is that you still have a life to live. You still have lives to save. You have a diploma to accept tomorrow that you worked hard on.

You did that," Zoe said as she looped her arm with Alyssa's. "He doesn't make up your worth in the slightest."

Alyssa knew that Zoe was right, but everything still hurt. It was hard to see the logic and truth when things were so dark to her.

The person that she trusted the most abandoned her, and maybe nothing in her life was as it seemed.

Maybe even Zoe would abandon her one day. She didn't know. She didn't know anything.

"I know. I just had this whole view of my life coming up, and it's all gone. Everything is gone," she murmured.