Page 86 of Just Friends

Alex’s eyes dash away from the phone, and his hand palms the back of his neck. I want to know what he was thinking as he watched me. If his mind drifted to where mine did. The thought sends an illicit thrill through me, and heat pools behind my belly button.

“This is going to sound ridiculous,” he says, the words drawn out like they’re being pried from him.

I let my feet drag in the dirt, scuffing against the bottom of my sandals until the swing slows. “What is it?”

His gaze meets mine and holds, warm chocolate fudge on the top of vanilla bean ice cream. “I just had a feeling like maybe you needed me.” Pink colors his cheeks, creeping up his ears. It’s like when he’s standing in a group of people he doesn’t know, trying desperately to look unaffected, but inside, he’s nervous and fluttery.

“It was stupid,” he says quickly.

But my heart has stopped, and that tenderness is back, threatening to consume me. The tenderness has a name, if I’m brave enough to give it one.

I cut him off before he can say more. “It’s not stupid. I think I did need you,” I say quietly, unsure if I’m meaning in this exact moment or in the grand scheme of life. “I was kind of freaking out after Sebastian called. It sent me spiraling.”

His eyes soften around the edges, like charcoal being smudged on canvas. “But you’re okay?”

“I’m okay,” I tell him, and some of the tension leaves him.

He’s quiet for a moment before asking, “So are you going to call him back?”

“What?” I blurt, my fingers gripping the rough rope until it chafes. “No. No, I’m not calling him back.”

Just the thought gives me hives, makes me feel like there are insects burrowing under my skin. After I walked out of Sebastian’s apartment that day, him chasing after me, a hastily wrapped towel around his waist and his neighbor still naked in his bed, I haven’t spoken to him. I couldn’t bring myself to block his number, though, and the texts and phone calls poured in for days. Apologies, so many of them that I was honestly too heartbroken to read, that I deleted before I could give myself a chance to read them. I was sofragileback then that I didn’t trust myself not to accept his apology and forgive him.

But then one night, he called, the night I was at my very lowest. And I answered. I didn’t speak, but he did. He grasped on to that one bit of leeway I’d allowed and put everything into it.

I remember how desperately I wanted to believe him, that it was a mistake, that he didn’t know how it happened, that he was scared of how much he loved me and was self-sabotaging. I wanted so very badly to believe that was true that I almost convinced myself it was.

And then Alex texted. Something short and silly, an idea he had for a car wash commercial, but it snapped me out of it. I hung up, and when Sebastian called again, I sent it to voice mail and messaged him to stop trying to contact me.

The next day, I decided to move to Nashville.

“You don’t at least want to know what he has to say after all this time? For closure?” Alex asks after a long moment.

I shake my head firmly. “No. I don’t.” The words come out clipped, and Alex nods.

When Alex speaks again, his voice is soft, gentle. “Maybe you should paint. Painting always helps you feel better.”

The thought of painting feels like slipping into a warm bath, the water closing around me. It eases all the tension built up around me like brick walls, and more than anything, I want to. I want to lose myself in acrylics, messy droplets and smudges drying on my skin.

“Yeah, I think I’ll do that,” I say, and a smile breaks across his face. It’s beautiful and unhurried, the kind of smile reserved for lazy mornings in bed, the kind you feel pressed against your lips and exposed slivers of skin.

“Call me if you need me,” he says, and as soon as he hangs up, I feel the urge to dial again. Without my realizing it, Alex has maneuvered so deeply into my hierarchy of needs that being without him feels like missing a limb.

And for the first time, that revelation doesn’t feel all that scary.

HazelFaceTimesmeonMonday night. It’s been two weeks since I watched her drive away from Wes and Lo’s lake house with my heart in her hands, and she still has another full week in Fontana Ridge before she comes home.

Which means I have another week of dinner alone on my couch, staring at the slightly indented cushion where she usually sits. I’ve gotten increasingly more pathetic as the days have gone on. Yesterday, I bought a bottle of her laundry detergent and washed my sheets in them so they’d smell like hers. And then I realized how creepy that was. So I washed them again in my own detergent and threw that bottle out. And then I felt bad for throwing away a perfectly good bottle of detergent, so I bought fifteen bottles and donated them to the homeless shelter across town.

Basically, I’m losing my mind.

Sitting up on the couch, I swipe open the call. Hazel is in her tiny twin-size bed in her childhood bedroom, that soft, worn floral quilt tucked up around her bare shoulders. I want to tug it down and press my lips there instead.

She grins, bright as a lighthouse on a stormy night, and everything inside me calms. “Hey,” she says.

“Hey,” I say back.

Just the sound of her voice grounds me, stills the part of my brain that’s been spinning since that morning on the porch, sunshine glittering on the lake.

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