Page 30 of Indigo Sky

“There’s not gonna be a later, you asshole. She broke up with me.”

He found that very amusing, apparently. “Seriously?” He laughed, rolling his eyes. “Christ, you’re better off, man. If she can’t take a fuckin’ joke or an innocent little question—"

“You propositioned her for sex!”

“Propositioned?” he mocked, making an obnoxious face. “Look at you and your big fuckin’ words. Anyway, you can do better than Little Miss Tight-Ass, all right? Get over her and move on. She was a bitch anyway. I’ve hardly seen you since you started dating her.”

They say, sometimes, it can take a while to open your eyes when you’re in a toxic relationship, right? Because you’re blinded by your own dependence on that person or you’re … I don’t know … too stuck in the habit of knowing them, of having them in your life, to fully grasp how bad they are for you. Well, for me, it had taken nearly two decades to finally realize that I needed some separation from Nathan Manning.

And it wasn’t that I didn’t care about him. It wasn’t that he wasn’t still my best friend. It was strictly that I knew if I continued to let my life run parallel to his for too much longer, he was going to ruin me. Even more than he already had.

But he’d been right about one thing. I was better off without Emily. Or maybe it was that she was better off without me.

I didn’t say anything as I turned to head back into my room. I needed to get dressed. I needed to get out of there for a while. I needed to clear my fucking head before I said or did something I was going to regret.

So, I threw some clothes on and headed out without so much as telling Nate I was leaving. I ran down the stairs and into the parking lot, and that was when I ran into Joe Weston. My old best friend from kindergarten.

“Holy shit, Revan?” he asked, looking at me like this chance encounter was the best thing to happen to him all year.

“Wow. Yeah. Hey, Joe,” I said, fishing my keys out of my pocket. “How’s it going?”

He nodded, his grin growing wider by the second. “Good, good. Can’t complain, you know. It’s crazy, bumping into you. I was actually just wondering whatever happened to you. They’re planning the ten-year high school reunion for next year, and I was thinking how wild it was that you’d just dropped out and disappeared.”

My laugh was humorless as I lowered my gaze to the pavement. “Nah. Still here.”

“Well, yeah, obviously.” Joe laughed, shaking his head. “You know, we should get together. Catch up or something.”

I sucked in a deep breath and slowly nodded. Because maybe it wouldn’t be such a terrible thing to spend time with someone else. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to have another friend.

“Yeah, that sounds good. When are you free?”

He shrugged and glanced around the parking lot. “Actually, my wife is out with her friends tonight, and my kids are with my mom. I was just stopping at the hardware store for a couple of things, but if you want to grab a beer or something now, I’d be down.”

Wife? Kids? Suddenly, I felt like I’d spent the past ten years doing fucking nothing with my life while other people my age were making something of themselves. Inadequacy flooded my veins and gnawed deep in the pit of my gut, but still, I nodded.

“Yeah, now works for me too.”

***

What a weird fucking day, I kept thinking as Joe and I walked from the parking lot to the bar across the street.

If Nate hadn’t come home, I’d still be with Emily.

If Joe hadn’t run into me in the parking lot, I’d be on my way to Mom and Dad’s place.

Nothing was going according to plan, but did Ieverhave a plan?HadI ever? I couldn’t remember a time in my life when anything had made sense, apart from dropping out of high school and becoming a mechanic—but that was nevermyplan. It was Nate’s, and I piggybacked on it. It’d sounded good enough, and I’d gone with it. I was good at it, but did I love it? Did I loveanything?

Fuck, I was having a quarter-life crisis. That was all I could chalk it up to being. Maybe Nate wasn’t the problem after all. I mean, he wasaproblem, sure, but couldn’t it be possible that the real problem, at the root of it all, wasme?

“Hey, you good?” Joe asked as we walked into the bar and headed to a high-top table.

“Ah …” I wiped my palm over the sweat beading across my forehead. “Honestly, you kinda caught me at a weird time. I just broke up with my girlfriend, and … I don’t know.”

He nodded slowly, sliding onto his seat. “Sorry, man.”

I took my seat across from his. “Yeah, no, it’s all good. We had only been together for a few months, so …”

“Did you live together?” he asked, his nose crinkling. “‘Cause that would make shitreallyawkward.”

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