6...

Mary was Frank’s ex-girlfriend, but he didn’t think that she was quite getting the “ex” part of it. Granted, the breakup was still pretty recent, but Mary insisted on calling almost every day. She babbled on and on about her daily business, which was mostly mind-numbing sorority business, and didn’t seem to notice when he almost never spoke. It was Frank’s job to throw in a “uh-huh” at random intervals and to hide the sound of his smoking, a habit which Mary chose not to know that he had.
The breakup had been all right, not too messy. Frank had driven all the way out to Davis to see her personally, he thought it was the ultimate asshole maneuver to breakup with somebody on the phone and he still wanted to be thought of as a nice guy. He told her that they were bad for each other, that they wanted completely different things out of life, that there was no longer love between them but habit and that was just slow death. He told her that this breakup had been a long time coming and she must see that. She had apparently not seen it and had cried for hours, literally hours. He had stayed the night trying to be a comfort, but ultimately would rather have chewed his own foot off. He remembered they had played Monopoly at one point.
He picked up the phone and began slowly pushing buttons. He felt that most dread in his life came just after dialing the 916 area code.