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We sat in silence.
“I haven’t seen you in a while,” I said.
He nodded, but he wouldn’t look at me. “Are you still doing the secret shops?”
“No, I’m too busy with the graze boards,” I said. “And you? What have you been doing?”
“Nothing,” he said. “I work. Read.”
The reading thing stung.
We always shared what we read. We buddy-read everything. Now he was reading without me? I guess I just thought if we weren’t reading together, that part of his life ceased to exist. But it didn’t. He didn’t need me for anything apparently. Not even that.
He cleared his throat. “There was this one book I think you’d li—”
“No,” I cut him off.
He looked bewildered. “No?”
“I don’t want to hear about it.”
He blinked at me. “Why?”
“I just don’t.”
His face fell. He looked wounded. I didn’t care. He wounded me first.
Knowing that he was reading things without me felt like a betrayal. He’d lost the privilege to discuss books with me. At least those books.
“Are you punishing me?” he joked.
“Would that be a punishment for you?” I asked.
He studied me. “Yeah. It would.”
“Then, yes, I am.”
I felt a crackle of… something. Tension.
This was the closest thing we’d ever had to a disagreement. Not one of the little back-and-forths we got into sometimes, but a real disagreement.
Good.
I wanted to fight with him.
I wanted to accuse him of all the things I was holding against him and make him defend it and explain it. Demand he tell me why he was suddenly too sick to go shopping with me. Make him admit he was ignoring me the last month, while simultaneously thinking enough about me to drive to my apartment and clear snow off my car. I wanted to lay evidence at his feet and dare him to deny it, poke him until he couldn’t lie to me anymore.
“Did you clear the snow off my car?” I asked.
He looked at me blankly.
“Did you?” I asked again. “And if you did, why did you do it? And why didn’t you tell me?”
I watched him swallow. Then he looked back over at the bookshelf.
“I can’t,” he said quietly.
“You can’t what?” I said to the side of his face.
