That was exactly the problem.
It wasn’t alive, reveling in every single one of its beats.
“I’m heading out for the night, boss,” Korey announced from the doorway. “And don’t forget, I’mout until the New Year.”
Shaking away my depressing thoughts, I opened the desk drawer and took out the envelope with his Christmas bonus inside. “Here you go, man. I really can’t thank you enough for your help when I was away. And for helping me push through all these orders once I got back. You’ve been a real godsend.”
“No problem. That’s what friends are for, right?” He smiled and tried torefuse the envelope.
“Please take it.” Pushing it into his hand, I said, “Get the kids a little something extra from Santa. Take Anna out to a nice dinner. Spoil her a little.”
“Will do,” he said as he finally took it from my hands. He started walking away but stopped at the doorframe. He turned around, walked back to my desk, and plopped himself in the chair opposite me. “Can I just say something?”
Korey wasn’t one to pussyfoot around the issue, so I had a solid feeling that whatever was about to come out of his mouth would be as honest as possible. “Sure.”
“We’ve been friends for what? Like fifteen years, now?”
Without even doing the math, I answered, “Something like that.”
“And it’s fair to say that we know each other pretty well, right?”
I laughed, recalling far too many over-the-topmemories with him. “You could say that.”
“So then you know I say this from a place of concern, right?”
I shrugged, feeling like this was going somewhere I didn’t want it to. “Sure.”
“What the hell are you doing?”
Pretending not to know what he was getting at, I responded, “Since tomorrow is Christmas Eve, after I finished my mom’s gift, I was planning on closing down the shop and heading home.Maybe have a beer or five and sleep past noon tomorrow.” I laughed, hoping to keep whatever he was driving at off the table.
“Asshole,” he cursed, letting his lips pull up into a small smile. “You know what I mean.”
I wasn’t going to back down, and I certainly didn’t feel like having an argument over it all. But really at the root of it all was the very distinct feeling that if I began talkingabout Ryan, about what I was doing sitting on my ass, twiddling my thumbs, waiting for the rest of my life to just happen, I’d open a wound that would gush all over the place. Since bleeding out wasn’t exactly in my plans for this Christmas, I deflected. “Can we not do this right now? I mean what’s going to come of it anyway?”
“Waking your sorry ass up, that’s what I hope at least.” He huffedout a frustrated breath. “Look, all I’m saying is this isn’t you.” He moved his hand up and down, putting me on display. “Working all day and night. Barely going out. You hardly ever see your family anymore. Honestly, I don’t know how your mother is letting you get away with it.” He stopped to scratch his head. “That woman has a way with words. Can get whatever she wants.”
“What’s your point?”I didn’t want to take out my annoyance on him, but he was the prime target right now.
“My point is you’re not happy. Even I can see it. And I know it has everything to do with him. I get that he told you to leave, but look at you. Don’t you think you should fight for him, fight for what’s going to make you happy?”
“I did,” I muttered. “I went after him. I tried to help him face down the choiceshe made, to make sense of his past. I thought I made him see just how happy we could be together, even when we didn’t know all the answers.”
“I get it. I really do. You gave it a shot, but maybe just one shot wasn’t enough. Relationships aren’t easy, especially when there’s baggage, believe me.” He shifted in his chair. This wasn’t our usual type of conversation, emotions and all that. We weremore of the beer and ball game kind of friends. Most of our conversations centered around work—what needed to be ordered, what customers were coming in for the day—things like that. “All I’m saying is how you are right now, the way you’re just muddling through life, I see it. And ifIsee it, it’s a big deal because if you ask Anna, I don’t notice shit.” We both shared a short laugh. He was right.It took him about a week to notice Anna had chopped off all her hair.
My phone buzzed in my pocket, the perfect excuse to put this little pep talk out of its misery. “I need to take this. It’s my mom,” I lied.
“Yeah, man. Okay.” He stood and walked around the desk. Clapping my back in a half hug half handshake, he wished me a Merry Christmas. Before he walked out of the office entirely, he turnedback around to add, “Just think about it. At this rate, you have nothing to lose and maybe everything to gain.”
I heard him set the alarm as he left the shop, and I felt like I could finally breathe again. Everything he’d just said rang so damn true in my head that he may as well have been inside of it. And yet, just like I had the last few months, rather than deal with how I was feeling, I pushedmy emotions down, as if ignoring them would make them go away.
When my phone buzzed again, reminding me of the ignored text, I slid open the message from Todd.Call me when you get a chance.
He’d been more than understanding of my work schedule, but what he didn’t know was that I was keeping those hours simply to avoid everything else outside of work. I wasn’t being fair to him and I knew itwouldn’t last. But since it was Christmastime, I didn’t want to do the shittiest thing ever and break up with him right before the holiday. Even though it was broken into hundreds of tiny shards, I did still have a heart.
He picked up on the first ring. “Hey.” He was breathless and I heard shuffling in the background.
“Everything okay?” Even though I had intentions of breaking up with him, Ididn’t want something to be wrong.
