Or was I the one making him want to escape?
I hoped that wasn’t the case, but I couldn’t ignore the possibility that whatever nerves or shame or embarrassment he felt around me could be pushing him toward drinking. After all, he’d first gone for it right after his botched attempt to kiss me.
That was another reason we weren’t talking. In the many years we had been in each other’s lives, Sean had never kissed me. Never tried. Never looked like he wanted to try. Never said he wanted to kiss me. Up until the jerk move the other night where he tried to hit on me and ended up on the floor for his efforts, the idea that he would think of me in any way other than platonic had been laughable. So I was at a loss to explain away his behavior tonight. If he had been drunk, sure, I could blame it on that—just another jerk move. But he’d been lucid—sad, but perfectly sober—and it had taken more than one attempt to convince him that it was a bad idea.
And it was a bad idea. A very, very bad idea. Because I was barely able to navigate the tangled web of loyalty, guilt, and resentment that existed between us now. If I added any more complicated emotions…
I just hoped that whatever awkwardness sat between us now would quickly dissipate and that I wouldn’t lose more of my friend than I’d already lost. Sometimes it seemed like I could almost see through him. He was missing so many pieces of himself that he was worn in places, threadbare in others, torn at the seams as people latched on to him, pulling and stretching.
If only I could sew him back together.
The movie ended past midnight and as the credits rolled, Sean sat up and looked at me. I wasn’t sure what he saw on my face, but it prompted him to reach out a hand. “Come here,” he prompted.
I scooted over and leaned into his side, letting him wrap his arms around my shoulders and kiss the top of my head the way he used to when we were in high school and he was consoling me over some boy who’d said something mean. “I’m sorry I’m such a tool.”
I didn’t respond. I couldn’t tell him it was okay—it wasn’t.
He walked me out soon after and I gave him one last hug. “Good luck with the music video.”
He gave a dramatic sigh. “You had to bring that up, did you?”
“You’ll make a great post-apocalyptic Robin Hood,” I said with a smirk and a wave.
He just shook his head and watched me go.
CHAPTER FIVE
I was puttering around my apartment, waiting for it to be time to get ready for my date with Jonas, when my dad called. My lips curved into a smile as I answered. “Hey, Dad.”
“Hey, Blue Eyes. You doing okay?” he asked in a voice that suggested I wasn’t.
“Yeah, I’m good. Why do you ask?”
“I saw an interesting photo the other day…”
I rolled my eyes. “Oh yeah?”
“A certain mysterious young woman dragging a celebrity out of a bar.”
My jaw twitched. “Yup, that was me.” I tried to make my voice sound light.
“Again?”
I let out a tired sigh. “Yeah.”
“So, how’s our boy?” he asked, his voice laced with concern.
“Oh, the usual. He’s making great music and terrible life choices.”
“I know it’s tough on you, but I’m glad he has someone to keep him grounded.”
“For whatever good it does,” I mumbled. “Besides, someone had to try.” I wasn’t proud of the note of bitterness that seeped through.
“You can’t blame Debbie. Her mother heart just couldn’t take it anymore.”
I felt bad that he had picked up on my jab at Debbie. I didn’t need to burden him with that. Dad and Debbie were good friends. Solidarity among single parents, I guess. But sometimes I just didn’t understand how she could have walked away. Maybe if she had stuck it out, he would have gotten better instead of continuing his downward spiral.
Then again, I had stuck around and he was still crashing and burning.
“I know,” I said. “It’s just…he got into it so young, and he didn’t have anyone to tell him how that world worked or give him boundaries and limits.”
“That’s life, Sweet Pea. I’m not saying it’s fair. It’s not. But we’re all just doing the best we can. Sean got a bum deal in some ways and a golden ticket in other ways. He’s the only one who can figure out how to make that work together.”
I gave a deep sigh. “I know.”
“So how are you really? I know that yesterday…”
Yes. Yesterday. “I miss her.”
“I know you do.”
“And he misses her, which…” is almost worse. Or compounded my grief and my guilt or something.
“Which what?” he prompted.
“It’s just hard to feel both his pain and mine.”
“You three…” he trailed off. That’s what he and Debbie had always called us. You three, as if we were one unit. In many ways we had been. We were together so often and working toward the same thing so frequently that it was easy to see us as one.
I loved Serena—she was like an older sister—but we didn’t have the same bond that Sean and I shared, or that Sean and Serena shared. There was no doubt that she was my family, but in a less intense way. She’d been one of the few steady presences in my life—until she wasn’t. Her death sent shrapnel into the fabric of the bonds the rest of us shared. It shredded the bond I had once felt with Debbie and poked holes in my relationship with Sean.
I let out a measured sigh. “Yes, us three. And now it’s just us two, and it’s not the same. He’s not the same.”
“You went to see him?”
“Yeah. He asked me to come over. He said he wanted to apologize, and I didn’t want him to be alone on that day.”
“Him apologizing is good.” That was dad, looking on the bright side.
“Yeah.” I rubbed my fingers over my brow. “It would be even better if he didn’t need to apologize.”
“We’re all just broken people looking for the thing that might fix us.”
I went to my window and leaned against the frame, looking out at the dimming sky, dressed in purples. Sometimes my dad said things that seemed to get stuck just under my ribs. We were all just broken people? Yes. Yes, we were. But trying to figure out how I was broken—let alone what could fix me—was hard enough without trying to figure out someone else’s brokenness.
♪♫♪
Date number two with Jonas. Technically it was our third date, but I didn’t count the first one—the one where I ran off in the middle. That wasn’t a date. That was a debacle.
He picked me up at my apartment. I watched his reaction to my small, slightly run-down home, but he barely looked at our surroundings and instead focused on me. It was nice, but also a little disconcerting.
I was unfamiliar with Roy’s Taphouse, so when I got out of the car to the sound of twangy country music floating from the cabin-style structure, I couldn’t help but tease him. “You didn’t tell me you’re a country boy.”
“It’s fun to dance to,” he defended as he rounded the car and settled a hand on my lower back. “The loud, thumping, club music with the thrashing around doesn’t really do it for me.”