“I had sex with your friend,” she’d told me with a sneer.
Too devastated about Lily to care, I gestured lazily at the door for Candice to leave. She’d given me the middle finger and stormed out.
Truthfully, I had treated her rather poorly. Leading her on and abandoning her to go sleep with another woman.
Not just any woman, though.
I rubbed my chest where it ached unbearably at the thought of Lily.
A look at my phone told me it was February 2.
It had been a month.
A month without Lily had left me grief-stricken. I’d missed classes and was barely keeping up with my coursework and dissertation. My advisor called me into give me a “tough love” speech yesterday. The lads were irritated with me, calling me a mopey bastard, and the only place that offered escape was my studio. My art.
I could fall into a piece for days—doing videos for social media—and only think of her now and then. At least that’s what I consciously believed.
Apparently not, I realized as I stared at the painting of her.
We’d texted after our night together. Or I’d texted Lily. She replied a day later with a polite response but no encouragement for further conversation. So I’d texted again. She replied two days later and again, there were no inquiries after my well-being or questions to lead to further discussion.
Like a pathetic arsehole, I attempted it one more time, but she didn’t text back for days and when she did, her response was courteous but distant.
Before, I would have called her out for it. Demanded she get over herself. Push my friendship on her like a codependent arsehole.
But this time, I couldn’t.
I had to stop being selfish with her.
Lily deserved that from me.
A month, though …
It might as well have been a year.
And I couldn’t seem to bring myself to care about anything.
Reaching for my phone to switch off the recording I’d use for my socials, I closed it out and saved it. To record, I switched off all other notifications, including phone calls, so it didn’t interrupt the video. Now I could see I had ten missed calls from Juno and several texts.
Guilt swamped me as I called her back.
“Dear bloody buggering hell!” Juno snapped in my ear. “Mumsy and Pa called me to say they haven’t heard from you in days, so I thought I’d try. I was this close to telling them to call the police. Where the hell have you been? Harry said you haven’t been back to the flat in days and that you weren’t picking up your phone.”
“I’m in my studio.”
“You can’t do that, Bastian! There are people who care about you. You can’t disappear on us!”
Juno rarely showed serious concern, so I knew I’d screwed up. “Junebug, I’m sorry,” I muttered wearily. “I’m really sorry.”
Her answering sigh was heavy with questions. “It’s not like you. You’ve been weird for weeks. What’s going on?”
I looked at the painting. The brunette was like an ephemeral moment of beauty the city couldn’t hold on to. Like Lily for me.
I missed her so much I was changed from it. I didn’t even recognize myself anymore. Was this life from now on? A black hole of depression and misery?
“Bastian?”
“I slept with Lily on New Year’s Eve,” I blurted out, my voice ragged around the words. “And I think we’ve come to anonmutual decision on her side to no longer be a part of each other’s lives.”
