“I need to go,” she whispers, already spinning around.
Panic races up my throat, seizing it around a single word. “Wait.”
She pauses with her hand on the doorknob. The tension in my muscles is obvious, but so is the way she’s still so pink. From her head down to her toes, I can see that what I just felt wasn’t one-sided. At least not entirely. There’s a tremble in her knees that wasn’t there when she showed up, and as wrong as it may be, I’m relieved.
“At least let me drive you home.”
Her shoulders slump forward. “Please don’t. I’m going to call an Uber. It’s what I should have done earlier.”
“Earlier?” I ask, unaware of the few inches I’ve moved.
Jealousy. That’s what’s beating at my chest like an angry fist.
It’s the same sensation I felt the entire time I was watching and listening to her date. The genuine enthusiasm in her replies and curiosity in her questions. She didn’t ask them just so she could find something to fill the silence, and that carved a hole right through me.
Then there was the hand holding.
I push my tongue against my teeth before blowing out a rough breath. It shouldn’t have bothered me. I was the one who chose Malik for her, and he turned out to be everything I thought I wanted for her tonight. Yet, I’d have preferred he be a complete and utter jackass. Then, Aubrey would have gone home with me, and I wouldn’t have spent the last two hours working myself into a stupor in my gym, trying to burn away the thought of what they might have been doing. I wouldn’t have been so flooded with hormones and adrenaline when I opened the door and saw her.
We wouldn’t be here at all right now.
Aubrey’s voice is breathy when she says, “Earlier, when I asked Malik for a ride here. Going home would have been . . .”Smarter.
“Right.”
“I’ll wait on the driveway until they get here.”
“Don’t use an Uber, Aubrey. I can drive,” I argue, pushing harder.
She opens the door, shaking her head, short strands of loose black hair swinging. “Please, don’t. I really need to just be alone right now.”
“This doesn’t have to change anything.”
It’s a terrible, pathetic lie.
“Good night, Finn.”
“I’m serious. We can pretend it didn’t happen,” I rush out, desperate.
Spinning on her heels, her face crumples as she croaks, “That’s what I’m doing.”
“Alright.” I nod, stumbling forward a half step. Her eyes track the movement, the panic lingering in her blue eyes intensifying again. It cuts deep. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that. None of it should have happened. Not the water thing, or our fight in the washroom?—”
“Please stop. It’s my fault. All of this. I need to go.”
This time, she scurries through the doorway and rushes down the porch steps. I follow, trying to give her space but finding it impossible. Watching her leave has always felt wrong in one way or another. We’ve been best friends for so long that she’s become the one constant in my life. She’s the reassuring voice in my head and familiar touch in any intimidating environment. I miss her even when we’re in the same city, and instead of her sitting on the couch beside me, eating ginger beef and drinking wine, she’s up in that fancy condo of hers only a few minutes away.
There’s a piece of me that aches every time we have to say goodbye and makes me wish that she could just stay attached to my side every day, all day. It’s been that way since we were just kids.
But this gnawing in my chest right now is different. It’s raw and angry and frantic. I don’t know how to soothe it. And the further she gets from me, the worse it becomes.
The broken porch light allows her to slip into the shadows, her figure rushing down the long driveway. I reach out and grab the railing, squeezing until my knuckles burn. The strain in my shoulder pulses before I force myself to relax and watch as she slows near the curb, her phone screen lighting up the night around her.
I hate that I can’t see her face. The reminder intensifies the pain in my chest. Yet I sink into it, watching in silence. Minutes pass, but I don’t so much as twitch. By the time headlights are flooding down the street, she’s glanced back at the house four times, like she’s checking to see if I’m still here. I haven’t been able to see her expression, to learn whether she’s as torn up as I am or if I’m well and truly as fucked as I fear I could be.
I’m left with nothing but pain and regret as she opens the back seat of the black car and slips inside. It pulls away slowly, creeping down the empty street. I linger on the porch, knowingthat she won’t come back tonight. Still, I wait. Maybe I’m truly as helpless as I feel, because by the time I finally turn around and head inside, one glance at the clock tells me I stood out there for an hour.
Sixty minutes of heavy silence and a thousand new unanswered questions.
