TEN
WE WERE TWENTY-THREE
Bzzz,bzzz.
My phone vibrates on the desk, and I smile when I see the incoming call. I grab it and hit answer, lifting it to my ear.
“Hey,” I say, tucking the phone between my ear and shoulder as I finish folding a T-shirt.
“Hi,” Jade’s perky voice comes through the speaker. “Still packing?”
I glance around my room at the open suitcases and boxes with clothes piled on the bed beside books I still need to sort through. “I think I will be for a while.”
She laughs. “You’ve lived in that room for three years. Stuff accumulates.”
“You’re telling me,” I mutter, dropping the shirt into the suitcase and sitting on the chair at my desk. “What’s up?”
“Nothing,” she says. “Just checking in to see how the big move is going.”
I scoff. “Big move? It’s just a few neighbourhoods over.”
“Yeah, well,” Jade says, “in Toronto that’s big enough.”
Truth.
“And to see how you’re feeling about starting your first big boy job next week.”
I roll my eyes, wishing she could see it. “Fuck off. It’s basically just a continuation of the internship, with pay and longer hours.”
“Exactly,” she agrees seriously. “You’re officially a graduate now, starting a real-life permanent job. Big boy shit.”
I sigh. “I already had to put up with this at graduation, you couldn’t give me a couple more weeks of peace?”
She laughs. “Now you can fuck off.”
“You called me.”
“Yeah, I did, so stop being rude.”
“My god.”
We both chuckle, and I spin in my chair, looking up at the ceiling. “You still at Mom and Dad’s?”
“No, I came back to Fredericton yesterday,” she says with a sigh. “I had to get back to work today. It was a good visit, though. Sometimes it’s nice to just get out of the city and spend some quiet time on the beach.”
I nod as my gaze shifts out the window, where glass and concrete are stacked into uneven lines against the sky. “Yeah.”
Jade goes quiet for a moment. “I saw Silas.”
My eyes lock onto a cloud drifting past the buildings, and my chest tightens. “Oh?” I say quietly.
“Yeah,” Jade says, her tone now a little softer. “In town. He was heading into the hardware store. Did you know he got a new truck? I never thought I’d see the day.” She lets out a small laugh.
My brow furrows. Really? He loved his old truck and put so much work into it. Andhe always said he’d do whatever he could to keep it running.
“No… I didn’t,” I say, dropping my gaze to my desk where papers and books are piled, ready to be packed away. And I tryreally hard to ignore the pain growing inside me that I didn’t know that. And that I don’t know anything about him anymore.
Jade sighs. “Sorry, Levi.”
