I was sitting on my couch, holding the ticket, when the phone rang.
I looked at the caller ID and smiled. Talking to a friend from back home was exactly what I needed.
I hit accept and held the phone to my ear. “Rusty, if you’re calling to bitch about how much being a grown-up sucks, don’t expect a pep talk because I’ve got nothing.”
Rusty laughed on the other end, and just like that, all the time and miles between friends had been erased.
He said, “Tell me about it. Can we go back in time and tell our past selves to flunk a few classes so we can go back to being in college?”
“Hey, I am still in college.”
“Ah, grad school doesn’t count. That’s like college 2.0—all of the work and none of the fun.”
“And working full-time is so much better?” I asked.
“Hell no. Yesterday someone spit coffee at me. Okay, so on the counter in front of me, but still I watched liquid arch from a stranger’s mouth toward me. This is my life.”
We laughed, and then the line went quiet.
After a few seconds, he said, “Now that I’ve buttered you up with laughs, I’ll get straight to the point . . .” And so the other shoe drops. “Bliss. I heard about the engagement. I’m sorry, man.”
I picked the airline ticket back up, and held it as I said, “You and everybody else on Facebook.”
“How are you doing with it?”
I said, “Okay.”
And I was just fine . . . where Bliss was concerned anyway.
“Cade . . .”
“I am, Rusty. I promise. I mean, I saw them a week or two ago, and it was awkward as hell. And depressing, because I’m pretty sure my friendship with Bliss is DOA. But I’m okay. There’s actually this other girl.”
I hadn’t told anyone about Max. I’d liked feeling that she was this awesome secret that I refused to share with the world. But she had my mind so twisted up that I had to tell someone.
“Another girl, huh?” he asked. “What’s she like?”
“A total mind fuck, that’s what she’s like.”
Rusty said, “I like the sound of her already.” He would. “So you’re together?”
“Not exactly.”
“Are you about to be?” he asked.
I looked back at that damn ticket and said, “Um . . . I doubt it.”
“Were you together?”
“Sort of.”
“Damn I’m confused, and I’m not even part of it.”
“Tell me about it.”
“If I’m reading between the Cade lines, I’d say you still want to be with her.”
“I don’t know, man. I do, and I don’t. She’s amazing, but she’s got a whole baggage claim to herself, man. If I’m honest, she stands to screw me up way more than Bliss ever did.”
“This is why I don’t date girls.”
“Not a solution I’m willing to take, man.”
He said, “It sounds like you’ve already made up your mind. You know this girl isn’t good for you.”
I did know that, but it didn’t stop me from thinking about her constantly. I had to keep reminding myself of how it felt waking up alone that morning just to stop myself from calling her.
“You’re right. I just want life to be simple again, you know?”
That’s what I’d seen in Bliss. I knew it now. A life with her would have been simple and nice and safe. Complication free.
“Good luck with that, Winston. Life isn’t ever simple. Not until you’re dead.”
The phone call went on for a while after that, but my mind stayed stuck on those words. We talked about what other friends were doing and the possibility of getting the gang together for New Year’s.
But I thought about how I’d spent twenty-two years chasing after a life that I’d convinced myself I’d wanted. A simple, predictable, perfect life. But it still had yet to become any of those things. I’d been accumulating talents and accomplishments, marking them off this unwritten checklist that had been in the back of my mind since I was a kid. But what did it all add up to?
The truth was . . . none of that kept people from leaving. Nothing could, if the person was determined to go. The only question was how long you were willing to chase them.
Rusty had to get to work, so we wrapped up the call with promises to talk again soon. I had hoped talking with him would give me perspective, but I still didn’t know what I wanted, and my thoughts were more knotted up than ever.
32
Max
I refused to be nervous about spending time with Cade. Not when I had so many other things to worry about, but thoughts of him kept creeping into my head.
He’d ruined me.
Before I’d been like ice—cold and cutting and solid. But for weeks, he’d been thawing me out, and I hated it.
There was no control like this, no protection. And I had fewer than twenty-four hours until the end of the world. Also known as family Christmas.
Home was the lion’s den. My scars were always more sensitive there because that’s where I’d gotten the wounds. Now more than ever I needed my armor.