Rough Edges

John — Saturday Night, My House

When I bought this fucking place — hell, when I bled for it, when I hammered every nail and sliced open my palms on splintered beams because I thought that’s what love meant — I was dumber than a goddamn sack of hammers. Stupid in love. Like a wet-behind-the-ears kid with no clue that love doesn’t pay for shit when somebody’s got a hunger for something new, something shiny, something like that protein-shaking cocksucker Mateo.

Ten goddamn years. Ten years of breathing sawdust and fiberglass insulation, grinding my teeth down to nubs through busted pipes and crooked fucking walls, pouring every drop of sweat and blood and whatever was left of my soul into a dream I thought we shared. Every Saturday hammering, every Sunday sanding, every fuckin’ weekday after work crawling around the attic like some rat, rewiring shit because Carol decided the kitchen needed “more ambience.” Sage green walls — the color of crushed-up fucking herbs nobody uses. A breakfast nook where the sun could “kiss” her coffee every morning. The clawfoot tub she wept over like it was a goddamn shrine to lost innocence.

And me? I didn’t even like this suburb bullshit. Didn’t like the manicured lawns, or the fucking HOA Karens measuring my goddamn grass with a ruler. But I gritted my teeth, swallowed that bile, and thought, this is what a good man does. This is what fucking love looks like.

And while I was out there scraping knuckles and living paycheck to paycheck just to keep her dream afloat, that slithering sonofabitch Mateo was balls-deep in my life. That fucker, with his trail-running shoes and his Instagram smile, fucking Carol six ways from Sunday in the bed I built. In the bedroom I sweated blood to drywall.

Fixed the fucking roof, patch by patch, shingled till my hands bled through gloves that smelled like rubber and regret. Painted every wall — oh, not just once, but every fucking time her mood swung like a goddamn wrecking ball. “Maybe a lighter blue, babe.” “Maybe we try eggshell, honey.” Like the right shade would fix the hole growing in her chest — and mine.

I could still smell the paint when I walked through those halls, still see the patches where I worked till 3AM, slathering mud and cursing under my breath while she slept soundly on the mattress I hauled up the stairs alone. Probably dreaming of that shit-eating Mateo whispering bullshit about mountains and dreams and the “call of the wild” right into her ear.

Goddamn it all. I fucking loved her. And she loved whatever version of me she made up in her empty fucking head. The handyman. The wallet. The steady hand to hold when the adventure went cold and boring.

Now? Now I look at these walls — these goddamn walls that know more about me than any living soul — and all I see is betrayal nailed into every stud, soaked into every plank, screaming silent accusations through every crack.

I burned the mattress.

Yeah.

Lit that motherfucker up right in the backyard like it owed me blood and back pay. Peter and Graham showed up halfway through — beers in hand, no questions asked. Just stood there with me, watching it go up in a blaze of cheap polyester and broken promises, letting me drink and curse and scream myself hoarse until the neighbors started looking out their windows like the nosy fucks they are.

Didn’t care. Let ’em look.

Let ’em fucking watch.

The house stank of smoke for a week after that. Still does sometimes, when it rains. Gets into the drywall, into the goddamn vents. I could tear this whole place down to the studs and I’d still smell it — the stink of something rotten I couldn’t scrub out if I tried.

Now I sleep in the guest room — that cold little corner box of a space I used to call the “shit room,” crammed with junk and busted furniture.

Pulled an old mattress off Craigslist for fifty bucks, threw it on the floor. Didn’t even bother with a frame. What’s the fucking point?

No way in hell I’m stepping foot in that master bedroom anymore. Not unless I’m half-drunk, staggering and slurring, fists already balling up at the thought of what’s waiting for me past that door — the brutal kind of fight you only lose to yourself. The kind of fight where you punch drywall until your knuckles split wide open and still it don’t fucking bleed enough to drown the images burning through your skull.

I can’t fucking look at it.

Can’t see that big oak bed — the one I built with my own two goddamn hands, spent three nights sanding and staining and cursing at splinters like it was a love letter carved in blood — without picturing her goddamn head knocking against the headboard, teeth biting her lip, eyes rolling back, moaning for another man while I was two thousand fucking miles away in a Motel 6, eating cold gas station sandwiches and stacking contracts just so I could buy her every useless fucking dream she ever muttered in her sleep.

Can’t even glance at that master bedroom door without feeling my jaw lock so hard it sounds like gravel grinding in my skull. Walk past and it’s like the walls themselves shudder and whisper, breathing out hot little breaths of her betrayal. The drywall bends, the air hums with it — the wet, slapping sounds of her getting fucked by some gym-rat dickhead who smelled like spray tan and Axe body spray. Whispering. Laughing. That low, sticky snicker of a whore who forgot whose fucking name was on the mortgage.

I scrubbed the floors until my knuckles cracked open like overripe fruit. Scrubbed till the water turned the color of rust and still the stink wouldn’t lift. Still her ghost clung to the seams of the goddamn floorboards like mold.

I painted over every inch of wall she ever touched, splashing primer and paint thick as molasses until my arms gave out. Covered up every greasy little fingerprint, every smear of her life I could reach, but the house still smells like her. Still feels like a graveyard built for fools.

Boxed up every last useless piece of shit she left behind — the ugly-ass yoga mats that stank of old sweat and broken promises, the chipped “Live Laugh Love” mugs that looked like a joke even when she first bought ’em, the hiking brochures she used to pretend she gave a shit about “adventure” while she rotted from the inside out — crammed all that garbage into boxes and dumped them at the Goodwill like the pathetic trash they always fucking were.

Didn’t fix a goddamn thing.

The ghost of her is still here.

Still hear the click-clack of her stupid heels down the hall at night, that sharp, fake little staccato meant to sound all flirty and playful back when I was too fucking blind to see it for the death march it really was.

Still hear her fake-ass giggling on the phone, pretending she missed me, pretending she cared, while her cunt was still wet from somebody else’s cock.

Still smell that cheap vanilla lotion bleeding out from the closet walls like a corpse rotting behind drywall. Sweet and rancid at the same time. No matter how many times I repaint, no matter how many goddamn candles I light, it seeps through. Won’t die. Won’t fucking leave.

You can’t rebuild over rot.

You can’t lay fresh beams on a cracked foundation.

You can’t fucking love somebody who’s already looking for the next cock to jump on while you’re out there breaking your fucking back trying to give her the goddamn world.

And Christ almighty, I still loved her.

Loved her like a blind, rabid mutt that didn’t know when to stop crawling back to the boot kicking its ribs in.

Loved her like some dumb fucking fairytale prince who thought if he just tried harder, if he just gave more, she’d stop looking past him like he was invisible.

Loved her so hard it hollowed me out, scooped the goddamn marrow from my bones and left me standing there grinning like an idiot while she packed up her soul and handed it off to some dime-store caveman with biceps and a half-baked motivational quote tattooed on his fucking ribs.

The only saving grace — if you could even call it that — was when the lie finally ripped itself wide open and spilled all over my fucking floor. When I caught her and Mateo mid-fuck on the sheets I bought, on the bed I built, in the goddamn room I bled for.

And Graham — Graham was there before the door even slammed shut behind her sorry ass.

No hesitation.

No speeches.

Just that cold, shark-eyed, Armani-suited motherfucker moving like a man who smells blood in the water.

He handled the divorce like an execution. Ice cold. Surgical. Fucking beautiful.

Made sure she didn’t walk away with so much as a splinter. Not the house. Not the truck. Not a goddamn nickel for alimony.

Signed, sealed, delivered — straight to hell.

Carol stood there on the driveway, face a blotchy, snot-dripping mess, clinging to her overpriced yoga pants and shattered little dreams stuffed into a duffel bag like the world’s saddest hobo. Bawling. Sobbing. Acting like she was the wounded party, like she hadn’t been the one who yanked the pin out of the grenade and giggled while the shrapnel ripped through both of us.

Couldn’t even fucking look at her.

Couldn’t stomach the pathetic whimper in her voice, the cracked sobs, the pitiful gasps like that was gonna stitch the pieces back together after she took a chainsaw to the goddamn frame of what we built.

She didn’t get a second chance.

She didn’t get a tear.

She didn’t get shit.

Graham made sure every goddamn nail, every beam, every shingle I sweated over stayed mine. Made sure the only thing she left with was a sore back from carrying her own guilt out to the curb.

She was lucky I didn’t light the whole fucking house up behind her just to make sure she never got so much as a whiff of the life she pissed away.

And me?

I’m still here.

Still breathing in the ashes.

Still sleeping in the guest room like a ghost who can’t stop haunting his own fucking body.

Still grinding my teeth every time the wind creaks the master bedroom door.

Still wishing I’d burned it all. Every last piece.

Now I work.

Work like a fucking dog with a broken back and a death wish. Work until the blisters tear open and bleed right through the gloves, until my knees crack and the world turns into one long grinding snarl of drywall dust and hammer blows. Mostly just to get the fuck out of this house. Out of these walls that whisper and moan and creak and fucking breathe when I’m not looking — like they’re alive, like they remember, like they’re watching me rot from the inside out with a grin.

I wake up every goddamn morning on that piece-of-shit mattress I dragged off Craigslist for fifty bucks and half my dignity. Smells like cheap foam and broken marriages, slapped down straight onto the warped floorboards like the final nail in the coffin of whatever joke life thought it was playing on me.

No bed frame.

No nightstand.

No lamps.

No pictures.

No fucking hope.

Just four grimy walls and a floor that squeaks when you breathe too hard, a sagging slab of mattress that smells like it used to belong to a hobo who died choking on his own vomit. Every time my back pops when I roll out of it, it reminds me this isn’t a life — it’s a goddamn sentence. Twenty to life for the crime of believing in someone who saw me as nothing more than a fucking stepping stone.

I eat whatever the hell I can choke down between jobs — gas station sandwiches wrapped in greasy plastic, greasy-ass drive-thru burgers that taste like depression and cardboard. Half the time I can’t even be fucked to warm the shit up. Just rip the wrapper open with my teeth and shovel that flavorless crap into my mouth while my boots are still caked in someone else’s dirt, still kicking sawdust across somebody else’s floors, building someone else’s dream.

And beer.

Always fucking beer.

Warm, piss-colored, bottom-shelf beer stacked in sloppy pyramids in the fridge like some pathetic altar to self-loathing. Six-packs, twelve-packs, fuck it, anything cheap enough to drown the noise for a few hours. Bought from that corner store that smells like cat piss and broken homes, manned by a dead-eyed bastard who doesn’t even card me anymore because he knows the only thing I’m killing is myself.

Stack ’em high. Crack ’em open. Feel the bitter sludge tear a hole down my throat.

It never dulls the shit enough.

Never even gets close.

Work.

Drink.

Pass the fuck out.

Wake up and do it all over again like some mindless meat-puppet that forgot how to want anything else.

No plans.

No fucking future.

Nobody waiting.

Nobody checking if I walk through the door or if I get splattered across some lonely stretch of road and left for the crows to pick clean.

Just me.

Me and the ghosts of every bad decision I ever made, rattling and snarling and clawing inside my head, scraping their bloody fingernails across the walls of my skull until I want to smash my forehead through the drywall just to hear something crack, something break that isn’t already broken.

And most days?

Most days I think I fucking deserve it.

Deserve every aching breath that tastes like rust and cigarette smoke.

Deserve every busted knuckle, every fractured rib, every whiskey-soaked blackout where I wake up wondering if maybe, just maybe, tonight’s the night my heart stops bothering to beat.

Deserve it because only a blind, brain-dead, bootlicking fuckup falls in love with a woman who was already halfway out the door.

Already halfway gone.

Already halfway on her knees for the next sorry sonofabitch to flash a smile and a flex.

I built her a goddamn kingdom, and she handed the keys to the first grinning asshole who promised her “adventure.”

And me?

I stayed.

I stayed and rotted.

I stayed and built a mausoleum out of blood and timber and hope, just to sleep like a rat in a sagging bed and dream about a life that never fucking existed in the first place.