Page 5 of February

“Yes.”

“Whereareyou right now?”

“I’m driving. Stuck in traffic, really.”

“And you need to know thisnow?”

“Yes,” she said. “I’ve been trying to figure it out ever since, and I think I need to know so that I can move on.”

“Bridge, it just wasn’t working.”

“But why? We were talking about how we’d move in together.”

“Yeah, and when we talked about it, I realized that that wasn’t what I wanted.”

“Oh,” Bridgette uttered.

“I’m sorry. I thought we talked about this back then.”

“We did. I just thought there might be more to it than that. I thought things were good. We were making plans,” she repeated, not caring how pathetic she sounded because she needed to know this.

It could help her finally move on if Toya would give it to her.

“It was only six months, Bridge.”

So, Toya wouldn’t be giving it to her how she’d hoped.

“And you’ve already moved on?” Bridgette asked.

“No. I told you, I didn’t want a relationship. I meant it. I still don’t really want one.”

“I kind of thought you were just saying that to make me feel better,” Bridgette replied.

“What? No. Bridge, IthoughtI was in love with you, but I think I just loved what we had then.”

“What was that?”

“A lot of sex, nights out, and fun. I’m twenty-four. I was twenty-three then. That was what I wanted.”

This was more than what Bridgette had been given during their actual breakup, so she decided that even though it hurt to hear, she needed to actually hear it.

“And it still is?”

“Yeah. I’ll settle down one day, but I’m not there yet. I knew you wanted a relationship and love and the moving-in thing and whatever came after all of that, so I thought it was better to just end it. I didn’t want us to keep going on and on and end up hurting you worse than, I guess, I already had. If I thought–”

There was a pause, so Bridgette’s eyebrows furrowed. She looked at the screen in her car, where she could see the call information, as if Toya’s actual face were on the screen and Bridgette would be able to read it and know what the woman had been about to say.

“Thought what?” she asked when nothing else came from Toya’s end of the phone.

“If I thought that you could be casual, I would’ve kept seeing you. I liked all the other stuff with you; I just didn’t want the commitment. You did. I don’t want to only see one person right now. I shouldn’t have gotten into a relationship with you, but I don’t think I knew it then that I didn’t want one.”

“Wait. You’re saying if I were all no-strings-attached, you would’ve been okay with that?”

“Yeah. But that’s not you,” Toya said. “You made that clear when you started talking about moving in together at, like, month four.”

“No, it’s not, really. But…” Bridgette sighed because she didn’t say what she was about to say. “I miss you.”

“No, you don’t. You miss what wehad, which was a lot of fun, Bridge. It was really, really good sex and a lot of fun.”

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