“I’m—” he cuts me off, looking past me, “not doing this right now, Gen. Not tonight.”
A shiver runs across my shoulders, and I feel iced out of my own best friendship. Like I offer him this olive branch only for him to snap it on his way out.
How long am I meant to wait for him to deal with his shit?
My eyes narrow on him, my sneer padding the hurt I feel. “I’m trying to help you.”
“Don’t,” he says with a nonchalance so brutal, I feel it beneath my breastbone. I’d usually stick around for his mood to get better but I can’t—not when I just chose his feelings over Grant’s.
“Yeah. Okay, well…I’m gonna go.” A curt smile pulls across my face as I wedge my way through the crowd, grabbing my clutch from the table top.
“Gen, I didn’t—” he sighs, following close behind.
“I have a headache. We’re good,” I lie, still unable to truly leave him on bad terms.
“Yeah?” His boyish grin feels out of place right now, but I love it. I always have.
“Yes, Chapman,” I look up at him, fishing his keys off the table before making a show of dropping them in my bag. “Text me when you get home safely.”
I shove the door of the stingy bar open and suck in a breath. It’s exhausting, carrying this baggage for him—baggage he should have dealt with years ago. We should have told Olivia about the summer we spent with her best friend, Lily; we should’ve told her how Lily talked abouther, told us about the girl she loved more than anything but refused to bring around us; should’ve told her about the way Lily and Will’s love crashed and burned at the end of that summer.
But we didn’t, because he told me not to.Shetold me not to, before she died. When I think of that July, it’s the three of us on the shoreline that I see, etched in my mind.
I release a shaky breath, shocked to feel its reverberations across my body. This ancient pull Will has on me tries its best to tug me back into the bar, back to him. But this newly minted corner of my brain, the one seeking the sense of autonomy I felt after leaving Grant’s the other night, tells me to walk the fuck away.
7
Grant
I let the bag I hastily packed yesterday morning slide off my arm, hear it thud on the floor, and release what feels like the first breath in over twenty four hours. Atlanta’s always a lot, but lately, it’s a full sprint from the moment I land until the moment I’m back in my apartment. This time we were going over the entire organizational structure of Fielder Foods, which included awalkingtour of corporate. Every single department was visited, and every single one had something to say to me. And it’s not that I don’t love talking to people, because I do, but they all looked at me like I’m this unquestionable authority and I hated it.
I get started on a quick breakfast, still hungry after the tiny omelet I had on the flight back, when I see the last text I expected to get this morning.
Gen
Are you home?
I blink at my phone a few times, wondering if this is what whiplash feels like.
I don’t know why I thought she would go with me the other night—she was the girl she’s always been. Distant. Guarded. Didn’t miss a beat. But damn if it didn’t hurt me. And I contemplated talking to her, maybe even calling her out on her shit, but it was the sign I needed. I am way out of my depth with her.
I lock my screen and finish cooking my breakfast. I’m midway through my stack of protein pancakes when a knock interrupts my solitude.
I expect Bertie, the freshman in the apartment next to mine, who’s needed my help a dozen times since he moved in. The first time, it was because he didn’t understand how to turn on his stove—hiselectricstove. Last week, it was because his clothes had irreversibly shrunk after he washed everything on hotanddried them on hot.
Swinging the door open, my eyes fall patiently shut. “Yes, Bert?—”
“Hi. You didn’t answer my text and then I was on my way to the city and I saw your car so…” the familiar lilt of Gen’s voice has my eyes flying open, my heart lodging in my throat at the sound.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, sounding more annoyed than I mean to.
She’s silent, her lashes shading her eyes from me as she looks at the ground, before lifting her gaze to mine. “I wanted to apologize for the other night. And I wanted to give you like, a day, because I was really awful to you, and I figured maybe you just wouldn’t even answer me; and I knew you’d have to answer if I showed up at your door, but now I’m at your door, and it feels like I shouldn’t have done this…because you seem mad?—”
“Gen,” I stop her. “You didn’t have to stop by to apologize.” She’s clearly on her way to rehearsal, if her fresh-faced, hair back, indecently tight spandex situation is any indication. I shouldn’t be affected by it, by her, at all, but there’s this genuine gleam in her almond shaped eyes that has me unable to move.
“And apologize over text?” She lets the slightest bit of her humor peek through, and I’m so greedy for more of it. I want, more than anything, to be as resolved as I was yesterday. I want to find the same resoluteness I had when I was stewing over her rejection as I walked the frigid halls of corporate. But it’s gone, and she has no idea what she’s already doing to me. “I am sorry, Grant. You didn’t deserve the way I treated you.”
I nod slowly, letting the sincerity of her apology heal the last wounded parts of my ego.
