Total pages in book: 191
Estimated words: 182070 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 910(@200wpm)___ 728(@250wpm)___ 607(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 182070 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 910(@200wpm)___ 728(@250wpm)___ 607(@300wpm)
Uh.
Something hot and spiky appeared in my throat, but I ignored it. At least I tried my best to. Because this wasn’t what I wanted to talk about now or ever. “Yeah, back when things were less complicated we saw each other a lot. I’ve been busy. You’ve been busy. I moved to North Carolina because I didn’t have anywhere else to go after I graduated high school, Zac.” Because my parents had decided to leave just as quickly as they’d arrived, and my grandmother had been buried, and I hadn’t wanted to live with my aunts and uncles long-term.
Unlike him, I’d never forgotten him; I’d just kept going with a Zac-shaped hole in my heart.
And it had been the other way around. He’d dropped out of my life. None of this had been my fault.
But his “So?” cut me straight down the center. Deep and unforgiving. “Before you left, I texted you, and you never wrote me back. Then you stopped comin’ over with Boogie, and I know I asked, but I don’t remember what he’d say. I did ask about you. He told me you moved. Not you.”
More like, he thought he’d texted me, but he hadn’t. And if he had asked about me, then maybe Boogie had given him some bullshit answer he’d accepted, and he’d moved on with his life. Not wanting details. Not caring about more.
Dear God, that kinda hurt. But it was bullshit. Straight-up, stinky bullshit.
And it sure as hell didn’t belong to me.
“I tried reaching out to you. Over and over again. Friendships go both ways,” I told him in a voice that sounded so small it hurt me even more.
I could see it on his features. In his eyes. Him still thinking. Processing. Trying to remember what? If I was lying? Or trying to piece together his fault in all this?
Why couldn’t we just… move on? I’d fucking talked myself into it. I’d told myself this was fine the way it was. That I could go forward, but all this was doing was hurting me. Making me feel small and forgotten—two things I hadn’t ever wanted to feel again. Like I hadn’t mattered enough, and maybe I still didn’t… even though the reasonable part of my brain knew that wasn’t true.
But the happy, smiling man was still totally gone as his eyes roamed mine, searching and searching. “I tried.” He cleared his throat. “I tried textin’ you. I swear, darlin’. I know I did. I—”
Whatever was in my chest blew up, taking up more and more space, and this wasn’t what I had wanted… but that was life. Giving you what you wanted and didn’t want without a single shit.
“You didn’t.” Ah, shit. Well, here we were. “You didn’t text me back for years, Zac. You never answered my calls either. I never got anything from you, and I tried.” And it was a lot harder than I ever could have imagined to lift my shoulder and make it seem like when it had happened, it hadn’t bothered me. But I wasn’t lingering on this, damn it. I wasn’t. I wasn’t forgotten. I did matter. “Look, it was a long time ago. It’s not important anymore.”
“No.” He stood up even straighter, making our height difference that much more apparent when he had to tip his chin down to look at me. “This does matter. I know I texted you. I wouldn’t have ignored any of your messages.”
I raised both my eyebrows at him as my chest ached. Because I had missed him. Because I knew without a doubt that I had tried. I hadn’t been the one to disappear. To forget.
He had, and he was reminding me. Hurting me.
Without meaning to.
But he was still doing it.
I had loved him, thought the world of him, and he’d left me behind—to follow his dreams, sure.
But he’d still forgotten.
After all the times he would roll his eyes at my parents when they would barge into mine or Connie’s lives once a year, acting like they were so happy to be around and that it didn’t matter they never were… he had done the same thing in a way.
“No,” he repeated himself, staring at me with those soft blue eyes. “I wouldn’t have. Maybe I would’ve taken a minute textin’ you back, but I would’ve—” His mouth opened and closed. Even his nostrils flared. Pink tinged his cheeks, and he shook his head aggressively. “I would have gotten back to you, darlin’. I wouldn’t have forgotten—”
He shut his mouth.
That instant, he shut his mouth.
Because he realized it then. He had. Maybe not ten years ago, but along the way he had.
Because he had stopped asking about me at some point.
Maybe in his imagination he’d texted me back or messaged me. Maybe once, maybe twice. But it had happened. Maybe he’d had every intention of calling me back, but that hadn’t happened either. I had stopped reaching out but only after he had.