Page 49 of Green
11
Theo
The day I went to Winsome for lunch, I went to visit Ethan and Chloe at their new place after they got home from work. Being home alone without Gemma was hellish. I couldn’t believe I’d textedThere hasn’t been anyone else but you for weeks.
I really couldn’t believe she didn’t respond to that.
As much as I liked Ethan and Chloe and their new place, it just made Gemma’s absence even more obvious because I couldn’t think of one time that I’d hung out with them without her. I was lousy company and I was miserable.
Misery was a totally unfamiliar feeling for me.
When you’re a runner, you learn to make friends with pain. You know that physical pain is inevitable when you push your body to its limit and you know that suffering is a choice. I had always chosen not to suffer.
Until now.
I was making myself suffer.
I was making myself miserable.
I was making myself visualize Ben doing all the things that I wanted to do to Gemma, in some hidden corner of the movie set, in a hotel room, in a parked car by the side of the freeway in the desert, against a wall in the bathroom of some restaurant, in his office trailer.
I couldn’t make it stop.
“Make it stop,” I groaned out loud.
It just didn’t seem right. If she wasn’t with Andrew, she should be with me. Not some random guy she just happened to meet at work. I have no idea why I was never jealous of Andrew. I guess it was because she knew him long before she ever met me.
For as long as I’d known her, she had never been far from my thoughts, but now she was dominating my entire being. She was it. Gemma Kelly was my everything. I couldn’t lose her to some other guy that she’d just met.
Chloe had disappeared to their home office to take a work call, so Ethan was alone in watching me stretched out on their sofa, covering my face. It was humbling.
“Is this an ego thing?” Ethan asked.
Of course it’s an ego thing.“No it’s not an ego thing. It’s a Gemma thing. God. Give us both a little more credit.”
“Calm down, you’re being a drama queen.”
I wasn’t being a drama queen, I just didn’t know if I wanted to live in a world where Gemma was with anyone else but me. Why would anyone want to live in that world? It wouldn’t make sense.
“You calm down.” She was having sex with Ben at that very moment, I could feel it. I groaned again. It was pathetic.
He took a sip of his gin and tonic, smacked his lips together, then offered this: “Here’s a thought. Devils advocate. Why not go out and bang some hot chicks. See how you feel afterwards. Let me know how it goes.”
I peered up at him through one eye. “Why are you like this?”
“I don’t know what to say here. I’m not the kind of friend who’s good at talking about stuff. You know who is?”
“If you say Gemma I will punch you in the head.”
“Her too, but I was gonna say my wife.”
“I already talked to her.”
“Oh yeah. She told me about that call.”
“Course she did.”
“By the way. Andie, the redhead who was at your party, wanted me to tell you that if you need a new renter for downstairs, she’s ‘still very interested.’”
