Page 65 of Envy

Year 1

Graham

“Hey, Apollo. It’s me ... I’m just getting off work. It’s … my birthday. So, happy birthday to me. I miss you.” I end the call and push my phone across the counter in disgust.

“You’re so fucking pathetic, G,” Dave mutters as he walks into my kitchen. He yawns, scratches the scruff on his chin, and opens the fridge.

“Yeah, I know. You tell me every single day.”

“Well, someone’s gotta keep you humble.”

“Believe me, life’s doing a pretty good job at that right now.” I groan and hop up onto one of the bar stools in front of my bar-height counter and pick up my phone again. It’s a compulsion. I check my email, my texts, and then double check my voice mails to see if maybe she called in the 3.7 seconds I wasn’t watching my phone.

Dave’s right, I’m fucking pathetic.

I called her the day after our argument. I wanted to apologize. I had woken up in a panic when I remembered the things I said to her. I hadn’t meant any of them. I left a voice mail telling her I was sorry. She never called back.

After two weeks of silence, I started conjuring wild fantasies of her being sick in some hospital, unable to come to the phone.

Because surely, nothing short of being near death could keep my best friend from returning my calls.

I had no way of finding out. I’d never met Apollo’s mother, and her aunt never returned my calls either.

I’d never really thought about how alone Apollo was until I realized there was no one else in her life besides her old driver who might know where she was.

I knew when she left that she was angry. Hell, I was pissed, too. But it never occurred to me that we would stop talking to each other.

Not us. She promised to be my friend through everything. She promised that she’d never turn her back on me.

Then, two months after she left, she posted on her previously dormant Instagram account.

It was a video. Her hair was blowing wildly in the wind. Whipping against her face as she tried to keep it out of her eyes and mouth. Her luscious, laughing, mouth. “I love the desert. I’m so fucking happy!” She screamed into the camera before she turned it toward the driver, a dark-haired man with sunglasses and a very stupid grin. “Say hi, Josh,” Apollo called from behind the camera. Josh shot the finger at the camera and Apollo laughs out loud and then turned the camera around. I caught a glimpse of her chin and neck before she stopped recording.

I watched the video on a loop until my phone died.

My eyes burned with tears and my throat clogged with anger as I realized that she was off living her life and that she’d turned her back on me because I wouldn’t have sex with her. Because I didn’t want to sully our friendship with something that I did for money.

I pretty much lost my mind.

I hurled my phone across the room so hard that it chipped the drywall. And then, I got completely shit-faced and sat on my couch and deleted every single voice mail I’d saved over the last five years. I’d muttered “Fuck her,” through my clenched teeth when I hit the trash can icon on my phone.

But really, I just fucked myself.

When I woke up the next morning, I threw up. Not because I was hungover, but because I would never get to listen to Apollo’s Portuguese rendition of Happy Birthday. Or the message she left telling me how proud she was of me on my first day of classes at UCLA. Every single last one of them was gone, and the thought of never hearing her voice again made me ill.

Instead of taking the hint and moving on, I started calling her every day. It always went to voice mail. Normally, I’d just listen to her voice on the greeting she used.

But today, I had to leave a message.

It’s the first birthday I’ve spent without her since I started celebrating my birthday seven years ago.

My phone buzzes with a text and breaks up my pity party.

I pick it up.

I don’t expect it to be her anymore. But, every time I see it’s not, my stomach clenches with a feeling I’ve only recently been able to identify. It’s dread.

Apollo might never speak to me again. She was right, without my cape, I can’t fly. What do I have besides my fucked-up life, if I don’t have her sunshine to cleanse me?

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