Three months later
It’s been six months since that night with Trent, and I wish I could say that I’m over him. That he didn’t leave a giant void inside me, but the truth is I miss him more every day. Therapy hasn’t helped me in the way I thought it would. Don’t get me wrong, it’s working, but it’s a painstakingly slow process. Each session we get closer to battling the demons that still have me freezing up whenever I try to text Trent, but the progress has been slower than I expected, and I find myself asking more questions than getting answers.
What hasn’t changed at all is that I still feel like a giant piece of my heart is missing. I didn’t just lose the man I’d fallen for, I lost my friend. It was always so easy with Trent. We could talk for hours about nothing and everything. We enjoyed watching the same movies and listening to all different types of music. Spending time with him took me back to all those times we’d hang out as kids and preteens. The long hot Texas days, chasing fireflies, making mud pies.
It was a simpler time.
Part of me understands why he was so eager to get back to being friends. I know what that meant to him. I can’t imagine the life he’s lived as a rock star, but it does seem pretty superficial.
But another part of me can’t let go of the fact that he thought our night together was a mistake.
I thought it was perfect.
But I guess I was alone in that. I let out a heavy sigh and then grab another chocolate chip cookie. I’ll work out tomorrow, but tonight I’ve decided to wallow. I’ve been holding myself together for the past few months—barely, but still. I go out with my friends, I laugh, I smile. I go to work, then the gym, never diverting from what has turned into a robotic schedule. I pretend I’m not still aching for him.
I think I deserve a night of being sad and lonely. Tucking my feet under me on my couch, I dip my cookie in my glass of milk, my eyes glued to the TV screen and a different pair of piercing blue eyes than the ones I dream about. My phone rings, and I glance down to where it sits on the armrest.
I put down my milk glass and slide the accept button. “Hey, Elise, what’s up?”
“Hey, Mom wanted me to call and check up on you.”
I can’t help but smile. “Way to rat her out.”
Elise just laughs, “Come on, you know how she can be. She worries about us.”
“Yeah, she does.”
“So…how are you?”
I let out a heavy breath, trying to figure out how to answer. I really don’t know. Some days I feel okay, other days, every little thing makes me think of him, and it feels like someone is trying to take my heart out with a sharp knife. Today I just feel weighed down with sadness, my whole body bearing the weight of my heartbreak.
“I’m fine.” It’s not true now, but someday it will be.
“I call bullshit.”
“No, really, I’m fine.”
“Uh-huh.” She pauses, and I nibble on my cookie while I wait for her to say something else. “I can hear The Great British Baking Show in the background. How many times are you going to watch that show?”
“Shut up, Elise. The tent is my happy place. Leave me alone.”
She has the audacity to laugh, I’m pretty sure at me. “It’s your dead giveaway. You only watch that when you are depressed.”
“I do not!”
“When Will got engaged to Candace and you guys got in that huge fight and you swore you were going to lose him—you watched it. When Sterling Maxwell cheated on you—you watched it. When Brad broke things off and you said you were totally fine because it was just a little break, but really you were super sad? You watched—”
“Okay, you’ve made your point.”
She sounds smug, and I can just imagine the shit-eating grin she’s wearing. Little sisters. “So, you gonna tell me how you really are now?”
I rub my eyes and lean back against my couch. “I don’t know. I really don’t. So I can’t give you a solid answer.”
“How about how you’re doing right this minute?”
“I’m sad. I…” My eyes well with tears—another unexpected side effect of therapy now that I’m constantly asked to evaluate my feelings—and I take a minute to catch my breath. As I attempt to work through my shit, I know I am crying more than I probably have in my entire life. “I miss him. I miss our friendship too.”
“Is he still texting you?”
“Yeah.” Every week like clockwork. I still don’t respond, but it’s no longer because I don’t want to. It’s more that I’m still frozen and don’t know what to say. So much time has passed. That night changed things between us, and I can’t go back, but I also miss him with a fierceness that makes my body physically ache.
“Maybe one of these days you should text him back.”
“And say what?”
“What you just told me—that you miss him.”
I sigh, tired of thinking about him and this stupid mess we’ve put ourselves in. “What good would that do? It doesn’t change anything. He doesn’t want us to be more than friends. He made that clear. And I don’t know that I can go back to just friends.”
I’ve often wondered if maybe the sex wasn’t as good for him. He said it was, but that was in the heat of the moment, and I know he’s more experienced than I am. Maybe what I thought was perfect was just okay for him.
God, that’s mortifying. Here I’ve been super stubborn about not talking to him, and he’s probably just trying to figure out why I’m so upset over mediocre sex.
I wish it had been mediocre for me.
“I hate knowing you’re so heartbroken,” Elise says.
“Yeah, well, I hate being heartbroken. In fact, tell me something happy so I don’t think about my own problems for five minutes.”
“I passed my GRE and will officially be pursuing grad school.”
“What?! No way! I’m so proud of you!”
“Thanks. I was super nervous about it, and now I’m just glad that part’s over. I hate tests.”
“I know you do.” Elise has massive testing anxiety, and she’s had to fight hard to overcome it so she can pursue her dream of becoming a veterinarian.
“Any other news I should be aware of?” I ask her.
“Um…”
“What? What is it?”
“I’m looking for Dad.”
I swear my jaw drops to the floor. “What?”
She huffs out an exasperated sigh. I’m guessing she’s already talked to Mom or Lainey about this too and is expecting me to tell her that it has bad idea written all over it, like I’m sure they have. “I want to know, okay? I want to know what happened to him. Where he went. What he’s been doing for the past twenty-two years.”
No, she wants to know why he left us. And I can’t blame her. It’s the reason I reached out to him so long ago, and I can’t lie and say the thought hasn’t crossed my mind to try again now that I’m in therapy.
Lainey, Will, and I have all mostly moved on. Well, apart from our apparent abandonment issues. But we gave up on trying to find him or even bothering to think much about him at all after he contacted Will when he was drafted to the NFL. Will knows more about what he was doing with his life at that point, but Lainey and I didn’t want to know. The fact he came out of the rock he crawled under just to tie himself to Will’s fame disgusted us.
“What did Mom say when you talked to her about this?”
“That it was a bad idea and he wasn’t a good guy, which is kind of obvious. If he was a good guy, he wouldn’t have left his wife with four kids under seven years old. But I need to know.”
“I get it.”
“Don’t try to—wait, did you say you get it?”
“Yeah.”
She lets out a breath. “Wow, I thought you were going to try to talk me out of it like Mom and Lainey did.”
“Nope. Have you had any luck finding him?”
“Not yet. I just started my search. Do you want to know if I find him?”
I shouldn’t because I know in my gut that it’s likely nothing good will come from that conversation, but what if he can finally give me some of the answers I need to get closure?
“Yeah, I think I do.”
“Okay. I’ll keep you posted.”
We hang up shortly after, but instead of feeling settled and calm like I normally do after talking to my sister, my chest feels tight like it’s hard to breathe. I can’t tell which part of our conversation is bothering me more—the part where she’s trying to find our deadbeat dad, or the part where she told me I should talk to Trent. Everyone in my family thinks I should talk to Trent. Well, everyone except Will. I never told him what happened between us. He’s got his own shit to deal with. I didn’t want to put my crap on him too.
The problem is I’m a coward.
I always thought I was brave and fierce, but these past few months have shown me how not brave I really am. I’m too chicken to talk to Trent. I’m afraid he’ll tell me he still only wants to be friends. I’m afraid he’ll tell me he loves me. I’m afraid he’ll tell me he never wants to talk to me again.
I’m just…afraid of it all.
And until I know how to conquer that fear, his texts will have to remain unanswered.