“Addie,” he says seconds later. I know it’s caller ID but I want to believe he recognizes the sound of my silence, the shaky intake of my breaths as I fight back tears. “Addie, hey.”
“I really hate you right now,” I whisper into my phone.
“I’m sorry. I never wanted to hurt you,” and it sounds like he’s near tears as he says it.
“It was one time? A mistake?” I ask, paraphrasing the messages he’s left for me.
“One time,” Zach promises. He doesn’t repeat the second half of my statement.
“I think you were never over her. Deny it.”
Our voices are gentle on the phone, like we’re exchanging secrets in the dark.
“I think because we were together so long I just…It’s not that easy to cut her out of my life. I thought it would be, but it wasn’t. She’s still my friend and I thought maybe that would be okay and I guess, I don’t know, it wasn’t.”
I feel my blood warming as he speaks. “So what do you want, Zach?” I hiss the question. Whodo you want?I don’t want it to be his choice, I hate that, but my heart is betraying me, sitting firmly in his pocket, the one I slid my hand into and promised to unstick him.
“I want you to not hate me,” he says. “I want us to meet face to face and talk and—”
“What do youwant?” We are both silent, and then I say, angrily, “Figure it out,” and hang up.
Another two days pass.
I keep trying not to think about him or the phone call or the fact that he couldn’t answer when I asked him what he wanted, who he wanted.
He hasn’t called since I hung up.
Today, on my drive back from seeing my dad—he was away on Thanksgiving, so Caleb and I went over there this morning—there is a force against my chest, relentless and sharp, like I’ve broken a rib or something. It’s been there for the past ten days, but I realize now that as angry as I am at Zach, I’m not close to being over him. Maybe seeing him face to face like he wanted would help. Maybe, just maybe, there’s somehow still hope for us.
He doesn’t know I’m coming because I didn’t plan to. As soon as I pull into the parking lot of the movie store, my mind is already filling with uninvited questions: Will he be behind the counter? What does his hair look like today? Will he grin at me when he sees me, that bright, disarming smile? Or will he be contrite, apologetic, nervous?
Then, as I get closer, climb out of my car: What if he’s not even here? Today is Sunday. What if he’s working at the Cineplex instead?
But as I step on the concrete, before I even reach the all-glass front of the store, I have the answer to my questions. He is working today. And he’s not behind the counter; he’s on a stepladder on the far end of the store, draping tinsel over the shelves, decorating for the Christmas season.
She’s standing next to the ladder, in a pair of jeans tucked into brown riding boots, and she’s holding it steady with one hand, gesturing with the other.
I can’t move.
I can’t do anything but watch them through the glass.
He climbs down and hands her a bunch of tinsel, and she flings one piece back at him. Wraps the other piece around his head.
He laughs and says something to her. He touches her back, her waist. It’s only for a second, and then he drags the ladderover a few feet and climbs on again to add some more tinsel.
It doesn’t mean that they are together, or that they are almost together or not together.
It doesn’t matter and I can’t tell and I don’t want to.
I told him to figure out what he wanted.
And he did.
He did.
As I stand there watching them, that pain in my chest stretches and expands until it’s a tidal wave of sadness, of anger.
It hurts to draw in my breath, to stay standing, to turn back and head to my car. And all I can think is,It was alwaysher.
