“Still a book geek,” I assure him. “I hope you caught that guy you were looking for.”
“Not yet,” he says, “but we will.” His watch buzzes with a text message, and he lifts his wrist and reads a text that flits across the screen. “Damn. Gotta go, but I’m sure we’ll run into each other again now that I’m in the neighborhood.” He opens the door for me. “I highly recommend the White Elephant,” he says, indicating his cup.
“I’ll try it,” I say. “Stay safe.”
I head inside, the exchange leaving me with the sense of the casual but rather meaningless banter one shares with passing neighbors. Already my mind is leaving it behind, scurrying through the lost minutes and my growing urgency to grab my coffee and head to work.
I walk to the counter, order a White Elephant, which is a white mocha with Snickers flavoring, and then head to the bathroom. Or I plan to head to the bathroom but freeze just outside the archway leading to the sitting area, in shock at what I discover. Jack is sitting at a table across from a man, and for just a moment, from the rear, which is the only view available of the stranger, he looks like Adam.
Still, I find myself skipping the run to the bathroom.
I walk back to the counter, and I make sure the barista does not call out my name, not that this was ever an issue. When I pick up my cup, it reads only, “White Elephant with whip.” I don’t linger on the generic writing. My White Elephant and I rush for the door.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
The fragility of friendship is on my mind as I start the hurried walk toward the library, thankful that I’m the opening manager this week and due to be in the library before Jack today. This allows me the much-needed time to think, to process why I somehow feel as if him sitting with a stranger is a betrayal. Why I ran from him rather than greeted him. These reactions are illogical, but there is no denying their existence. There’s something in the core of our relationship rotting away, and I do not understand how or why.
This idea journeys my mind through history again, landing solidly on my first lesson in that fragility. Ana, the childhood friend who I’d accidentally tripped, is at the center of that lesson. While I cried and worried about her after her fall, she told everyone I’d hurt her on purpose.
I hadn’t been ignored when I was mocked and tormented by her friends, who were once mine. But shortly after I’d become nothing but a ghost to those I’d played with, celebrated birthdays with, called friends. So easily life shifts, night from day, sunny to stormy.
I’m back to why I ran away from Jack today.
My answer is one dirty word.
Secrets.
They’re in the air, burning through the sweet smell of friendship and leaving behind a bitterness I cannot quite name.
I only know that as an adult, we are faced with the reality that secrets exist. They come at us in shades of many colors, in both small and large, layered with history, if only that of how we were raised.
Who was Jack sitting with, and why does it feel like a secret?
Why is my skin prickling, nerves jumping around?
My pace quickens with my heart rate, my mind jumping here and there, landing far in the past this time, in my childhood, where my own secret originates. When I was five, my little mind conjured a group of imaginary friends, four pastel-colored cartoon character animals. Only, pastel colors and cartoonlike characters do not represent friends at all. They were mean, stalking me, scaring me. No,terrifyingme. Yes, I really did manage to transform cartoon characters in shades of pink and neon blue into demons. I’m sure a psychologist would tell me this is representative of a fear of the world—or myself, maybe.
Or something else I choose not to linger on.
Whatever the case, the entire situation feels weird, and no one knows about this part of me but my parents.
And now Adam.
I don’t know why, but I shared this, and so much more, with a man who is virtually a stranger. The funny thing is he didn’t laugh or suggest I’m mentally unstable. Instead, he confessed about his own imaginary friend, a bear named Billy, who was not a cartoon. We spent at least an hour discussing why our minds conjured up such creatures. In the end, we decided that somehow our imaginary friends represented our inherent insecurity, and thus our curses to become so darn intangible to the world.
This brings me full circle to the bond Jack and I have always shared in a way that Jess, my sister in so many ways, can never understand. Jack’s friendship assures me that I am never completely unknown and unseen, as mine does him as well. In my mind, he’s family, and I hide nothing from him.
Except you do,I remind myself.
He doesn’t know about Adam.
He doesn’t even know about my imaginary “friends.”
And yet,I think again,I told Adam.
I step inside the library, the cool air of the chilled building washing over me as I cross the lobby toward the escalator. I’m halfway there when the fingers of awareness on my neck jerk my gaze left to the service desk, where I find Akia. I blink with the realization that he’s watching me, a tiny pull at the corners of his mouth. I’d label the look amusement, rather than a smile.
The man who’d comforted me last week is laughing at me. Why is he laughing at me?
