Page 43 of Hard to Pretend

“Stop what?” I asked.

“Beating yourself up. You made a mistake, but they aren’t going to hate you forever.”

It felt like they would. Maybe he was right and I was being overly dramatic about everything. “I’m just…” I frowned, trying to figure out how to explain the way I felt inside. “I don’t want to lose them.”

“Give them time. Give them the weekend at least, then reach out to Natalie.”

“Why Natalie?” I questioned.

He grinned and stole a pickle from my sandwich, popping it in his mouth and chewing before he answered. “Because she’s going to be the first one to forgive you.”

He was probably right, and I knew it. I picked back up my sandwich and spent the rest of the afternoon talking with my brother, trying to silence my worries.

“Have you talked to your friends?” Seb asked the next night. He’d come over after work, and we were sitting on the couch, full from dinner and watching our show.

He’d been good at not pushing me about the situation with my friends. He’d comforted me the first night. He even offered to come over so I didn’t have to be alone. When I didn’t take him up on it, he stayed on a video call with me all night until I fell asleep. When I woke up, my phone was dead, but I felt at peace until I remembered I was fighting with my friends and went to visit Joshua. His presence was having the same affect on me now.

Instead of racing through all the versions of my life that didn’t include my friends, I felt relaxed enough to talk about it. “Not yet. Joshua said I should text Natalie today, but every time I start…”

“You chicken out?”

“Like the world’s biggest chicken,” I confirmed. “I don’t want to have her ignore me. I don’t want to find out that they hate me, you know?”

“Do you really think they hate you?” he asked, shifting to face me. I missed the weight of his body against mine immediately and fought the urge to pull him back.

“No,” I answered softly, “but I do know I hurt them.”

“That’s part of friendship, though,” he said simply. He took my hands in his and brought my knuckles to his lips, kissing them gently. “I hurt Holden the other night, after he told Mason and Luce about us. I shouted at him and basically called him a dumbass in a not-so-affectionate way. I was an asshole, but we talked it out later and moved on.” His lips curled up into a small smile. “We always move on from the moments of assholery.”

I laughed at his turn of phrase, but my laugh sounded hollow to my ears. “That’s where I think our friend groups are a bit different,” I confided. “We don’t have a lot of moments of assholery, as you so eloquently called them. I don’t think we’ve ever actually fought.”

“You and your friends have never fought?”

“No?” At least not that I could recall off the top of my head. We’d bickered from time to time, but even that had mostly been during game nights. It had never been anything serious, never anything that requiredtime and space. We’d always been honest with one another. I should have thought about that before I lied to them, before I dug myself into this stupid hole. “We’re moretalk it outpeople. Watching them leave the other night without us talking it out felt wrong.”

Seb looked thoughtful for a moment. When he spoke, his voice was steady. “It probably felt wrong to them too.”

“Have you and the guys ever had anything like this?”

He nodded. “More times than I can count. I remember this really bad one. It was early in college, and it was the first time we’d really been away from each other. Jonas was going through some stuff, and he was lashing out a lot. One thing lead to another, and he ended up exploding on us. A lot of really unkind things were said, and I thought that maybe it was the end. I was devastated.” I could hear the hurt in his voice as he talked. Even years later, fighting with his friends had left scars. I wondered if this was the first scar on my friendships, if they’d think back to it and have that same look in their eyes. I didn’t regret getting with Seb, but I regretted lying to them. “Thursday came around, and we all got online. Everyone but Jonas. We talked for a little bit, but it feltwrongwithout him. It felt like we were incomplete. We started blowing up his phone, one call after another after another until he finally answered Matt. Matt told him to get his ass online, and we talked it out. Headmitted some of the stuff he’d been struggling with, and we figured out ways to help him.”

“What kind of things was he dealing with?” I asked. “I mean, if you can tell me.”

“Anxiety issues. After that, we convinced him to go to the mental health clinic on his campus. He still turns into an asshole when it flares up though,” he answered with a laugh. “So you know, when you meet him, if he’s being too big of a dick, don’t take it personally. He usually doesn’t mean it.”

“Usually?”

Seb shrugged. “Anyway, the point of the story is that sometimes, you have to give someone a bit of time, and if that doesn’t work, you have to badger them into talking about what’s really wrong.”

“I know what’s really wrong. I lied to them.”

“There’s probably more to it than that,” he countered. “Maybe it’s just the because it’s the first time, but there’s probably more to it than that. You need to figure it out.”

I pulled him closer to me. “Can I figure it out tomorrow?”

Tonight, I wanted to stay close to him. I wanted to bask in the comfort that he provided. I needed his steadiness. He curled up back against my chest, and we spent the night watching our show.

17

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