“No, we were both supposed to be on the whole week after the cookout, but he called off yesterday and then again this morning.”
Suddenly I can barely breathe at all. My legs go weak, my heart rate quickens and none of it has to do with running.
“So you talked to him?”
“Well, Zeke did. Called both days to let him know he couldn’t make it in. Not like him at all, but Zeke said he sounded fine on the phone.”
He called them. Jay — who I slept with, who told me he wanted to be wherever I am, who insisted that I be with him, who hasn’t called or texted in over an entire day sans six words, called them. The part of mybrain that worried that maybe something had happened to him, relaxes, while the other part, which was fully convinced he was ghosting me, is going off, lights and sirens.
“I, I, I got to go,” I stammer and take off in the opposite direction.
“Have fun!” Sean calls out completely oblivious to the mental breakdown happening right in front of him.
“Asshole!” Chloe says over the phone. I’ve been walking aimlessly way past my apartment at this point and decided calling her made more sense than listening to Taio Cruz’sBreak Your Hearton my running playlist over and over.
“I don’t know Chlo, maybe it’s me.”
“What? As in maybeyou’rethe one who Magic Miked your way intohispants, and then abandonedhim?”
“If anything it was more like Paul Walkered into them from Fast and Furious," I say dimly.
“Okay, fair. My point is,youare not the asshole,” she clarifies.
“I know, but he told me over and over again that he doesn’t do this kind of thing. That he’s broken, and damaged, and I somehow thought none of that would matter.”
“And it shouldn’t.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t see him, Chlo. This thing with his brother really tore him up.”
“Listen, I’m just saying we all have shit.”
“I think his shit is a little bigger than our shit,” I say.
“Ew,” Chloe says. “I'm just saying, we all have things going on. No one else is disappearing and then lying about it by omission.”
“I know,” I say. And I do know. But that’s the problem.
Besides his “people,” only I know how tormented Jay seems to be about anything and everything that’s happened in his past. How he holds onto his mom, his brother, foster care, like they’re lifelines instead of anchors.
“I’ll keep you posted.”
“You better. But Claire,” she says, sighing into the phone. “He’s not gone yet.” She ends the call, and I’m left paused in the middle of the sidewalk.
And there it is. The center of my fear. The reminder that my teaching career, my future, Dad’s support, even Mark for Christ’s sake, all just…ended. Giant parts of me that came crashing down after one conversation.
“There’s just no need for your position.”
“I cheated on you.”
“I never said I supported this.”
And now here’s Jay, slipping away too.
A man of few words offering not even one.
After literally hours of walking, I find myself at the shopping center with Busy’s and Enzo’s. I have no money with me, so coffee is out, but maybe I can at least bum some air conditioning from Ronan and Mikey.
I open the door to the restaurant, the smell of the pizza oven just coming to life, wafting toward me. Ronan, who is sitting at the register counting bills, looks at me from behind the counter and pulls his hands to his bruised face.
