I sighed as my shoulders drooped.
"I know," I said. "I guess I just keep hoping I'll see him. It's been months since he left. I can't believe he hasn't even texted me."
"I'm sure it's hard on you. You two were really close."
"And then he just vanished. Sometimes I feel like I made up the entire friendship. Like maybe I missed something and we weren't as close as I thought we were."
"You know that's ridiculous, right?"
"Of course I do," I said. "But that's how I feel."
"Have you tried calling him? Or maybe asking Cassie's husband about him? Isn't Gabriel Gideon's older brother?"
"He is, but I can't pull them into my drama, they have enough going on," I said. "Anything new with Billy?"
"I'm guessing you're putting that in the drama folder?" she said sarcastically.
"No, and don't say stuff like that. You know I don't think of your life as just drama."
"Thanks, Becca, but trust me, for a while it was nothing but drama. I'm just glad that's over."
"Are you sticking to your guns about not getting back together?"
She nodded, but she didn't have the same conviction that she used to.
"It's complicated," she said. "I don't have another word for it. He's still living with me, but nothing is happening between us. Nothing has happened between us in years, and there's no way I'm starting now. He has his own room and he'll be moving next month anyway. It just took him a while to find a place.”
"How's he doing?"
"Billy's doing great," she said. "He's focused on getting back to work and keeping himself sober. I'm glad he's finally decided to get his life together, but it would take a lot for me to let him come back. I still love him, but I don't know. Love shouldn't be so hard."
After lunch, Sandra and I went into the bookstore next door. As I stopped to breathe in the scent of books, Gideon caught my eye. He was on the cover of a magazine.
Gideon's eyes looked more blue than I remembered. I flipped the magazine open and found his cover story. I could hear his words as I read them, and that made me miss him even more.
I didn't have a reason anymore to not call him, but the truth was I never had much of a reason to begin with. We were friends, close friends, best friends even, and I threw that away. There was no way I could forget that. Once we were friends again, we could figure out how to deal with what happened between us.
* * *
A week had passed since I thought about calling Gideon, but I did nothing. I didn't know what to say to him. I wasn't sure what to expect.
I was driving towards Mirabella's for one of our group lunches when I slowed my truck down. I was already late, which made me feel awful, but what was worse was that I was late on purpose. I didn't want to see my friends, I just wanted to be left alone.
Just as I was about to turn into the parking lot, I decided to veer in the other direction. I felt bad. It wasn't that I didn't love my friends, I just didn't want to be grilled about Gideon. I had enough of hearing how perfect we were together, and I knew that now that they were all partnered up, I'd never hear the end of it.
I continued driving, not really sure where I was headed until I realized I was near the MMAC. I hadn't seen my uncle in a month so I figured I would drop by and say hi.
I parked my pickup truck at the curb and fed several quarters into the meter. As I entered the gym, the humid air combined with the stench of sweat struck me. I didn't know how my uncle was able to work there for all of these years. And as I found him yelling at a new fighter, in the thick zip-up sweater he always wore, I couldn't help but laugh. I couldn't imagine Uncle Mack doing anything else.
I snuck up behind him and as I put my hand on his shoulder, he reached up and patted my hand without taking his eyes off his fighter, as if he had been expecting me.
"It's about time you came to visit, Becca," he said gruffly.
"I was in the neighborhood so I figured I would stop in."
Uncle Mack turned and tilted his head at me in a similar way to how Cinder looked at me when she was confused.
"Is everything okay?" he asked.
