Page 60 of Level Up
Which makes sense
Since they are your friends
SconesOfAyor:
Okay I’m guessing you’re just pretending to be offline
Since I can see you played three more hours of SOA 4 today
So I’ll just shut up until you feel like talking again
SconesOfAyor:
(Sorry if it’s weird that I checked your playtime; I was worried about you)
SconesOfAyor:
(And sorry if it’s weird that I was worried about you)
And a new message that arrived while I was having dinner:
SconesOfAyor:
Miss you, btw
I settle at my desk with tea and my headphones, ready to play for a few more hours before bed tonight, and I change my online status to appear active. I’m easing my way up to responding to his messages—though I wouldn’t even know where to start.
I don’t even get a chance to make up my mind before a notification pops up that he’s trying to start a voice chat with me. I barely give it a thought, answering immediately. Like a reflex.
“Hey.” My voice sounds thick yet hollow through my headphones.Has it always sounded like that?
“Are you okay?” he asks without a moment of hesitation, or even a perfunctory salutation.
I shrug even though he can’t see the motion. “Yeah, I’m fine. I’ve just been busy.”
If he knows it’s a lie, he doesn’t say anything. “Nothing bad, I hope,” he says, and the concern in his voice is killing me.
I feel more ridiculous for my reaction the other night than ever. As if him not wanting to kiss me meant he didn’t care about me at all. What kind of messed up logic is that?
I am so unfamiliar with…whatever this is—this overwhelming and unwelcome feeling taking over me—that it’s like I don’t even remember howbeing friendsworks. But when I think about it, I’ve never really had a friend like this.
Maybe I thought Cameron was like this, but now I don’t think he ever was. I was there to deal with his problems, neverthe other way around. And while Victory will always be my ride-or-die BFF, it’s never like this with her.
“Family drama,” I say weakly, which is partially true. “I had to help Marie move her stuff in.” That was today, though, and doesn’t account for my absence yesterday, but I hope he won’t ask.
“Right, yeah.” He falls silent for a moment, and I worry that I’ve destroyed everything that made talking to each other feel easy for the past three weeks. “I guess I forgot about that. But I’m glad you’re back.”
“Like you can’t even go a day without talking to me,” I say, trying to sound like I’m teasing him, like this is easy again.
“I mean, I survived it,” he says with a laugh. “But I hated it.”
“Malcolm was extra obnoxious?”
“You have no idea.”
I laugh in earnest now, and the knot of anxiety in my chest loosens a little. “Well, I appreciate that I had a novel’s worth of texts to return to.”
“I would apologize, but that implies that I won’t do it again,” he says. “And we all know that’s not true.”
