“You remember?” Laurie giggled excitedly. “Tell me!”
As if in a trance, he replied, “I… I actually bought it for your mom for Valentine’s Day, but… but we had a fight that night, and I forgot all about it.”
Laurie furrowed her brow. “Why were you fighting?”
He sighed. “Her roommate at the time told her that I hit on her at this party we were all at, and your Mom hit the roof.”
“Did you?”
“God, no, she was a miserable, manipulative bitch. She didn’t have a date for the party, so she got drunk, and started hitting on all the other guys there, and when your Mom tried to stop her, she claimed I was feeling her up, and… well, that started the fight.”
Laurie placed a hand on his knee. “Oh, no. So what happened?”
Paul was staring off into space now, recalling the dark time. “We… we broke up. I was miserable, I… I spent the next few days getting drunk all the time, I got into a lot of fights…” Paul looked over at Laurie now, as she had begun rubbing his thigh.
“Go on,” she said softly.