Because he knowsme.
Like I knowhim.
And that’s why he’s relentlessly messaging.
I would do the same if the situation was reversed except, I wouldn’t have made him choose between me and Mari.
I’ve never done that.
I wouldneverdo that.
Why did he have to try to do it to me?
M: JUST. PICK. UP.
M: PLEASE GILLY.
This time when the option to video chat appears on my computer screen, I pause the show on my phone, reluctantly hit answer, and flop my sweatshirt covered frame backwards into the chair. “What, M? I’m really,realllyyyyynot in the headspace for a lecture or a woe as me speech or the blame game or whatever it is you’re dying to say.”
He simply flops his face into his open palm and meekly asks, “You okay?”
Not seeing an inkling of anything other than pure, unfiltered concern successfully causes my shoulders to slump.
My heart to plummet to my stomach.
My head to slowly shake as tears struggle to not swell in my eyes.
He flashes me a sympathetic grin before investigating, “How many times have you guys met?”
“This was our first face to face, but we’ve been chatting over video since Bronny first arrived this summer.”
“She likes you, aye?”
“I’msuperlikeable.”
“So, she loves you.”
“Like a rookie does his first skate.”
“It’d be weird if she didn’t.”
“How weird?”
“Like a Veteran falling to the ECHL.”
“That never happens.”
“Thatrarelyhappens.”
“It’s impossible.”
“Improbable,” he corrects prior to grinning, “like not adoring you, Gilly.”
New tears threaten to arrive in my gaze yet successfully overwhelm my voice, “I don’t know how they’re gonna survive without her…”
“They’ll make it.” M leans into the camera a little closer. “They’ve got you.”
His words of encouragement grant the tears clinging to my lids permission to fall.
