27. Winnifred
M y boots dug into the Romfuzzled bar’s gravel parking lot. The sign said closed outside, but I didn’t want to be here in normal hours anyway. I wanted to be there in a time where they had to listen. No distractions and no interruptions.
Ever since Friday, Crew had blocked me out almost entirely. I believed the only reason he hadn’t fully turned me away was because he knew if I didn’t get an answer after each text I would be showing up to his apartment.
So each message I’d sent over the last five days had been reluctantly answered with short, simple responses.
It’s okay. I understand. I’ll be there Saturday. No, I’m not angry. Yes, I still care about you.
But none of that was enough. I had wrongs to right. And if I couldn’t fix the mess I’d made, I could fix another one that he was never going to. I could do this for him at the very least. After everything he’d done for me, I was going to do what I could for him back. Even if it meant us not being together.
“Hey, Winnie!” Calla turned around and smiled at me, waving a menu. “I just updated our menu designs, come look. Marigold and Rachel are going to model them if you want to-”
“You guys know how much he looks up to y’all?” I didn’t have to say who, judging by the fall of all of their faces, they knew. Layla and Luke turned from their conversation at the bar. Adam set his phone down. Nathan stepped up next to his wife. They all sat there, somehow confused and yet knowing all in the same look.
They had to know how he felt. Didn’t they? Did they not seem him like I did? Does anyone?
“How he beams from every single one of your tiniest praises like they came from God himself? He loves you guys, this whole family, more than probably all of you combined and still he feels entirely alone. Did you not see it? Do you not realize at all that he feels entirely inferior to all of you. He’s put so much into you and you’ve done nothing back.” I wasn’t sure if I was yelling more so at them or myself, but it had to be said. For all of us.
“I had no idea,” Rachel shoulders slumped forward. “He’s always so happy and smiling, and even when he’s not he’s just acting goofy. I’ve never seen another side of him.”
“Yeah. Crew was always…Crew. He always ran away, even when he was a toddler he would always find some sort of hide out and be gone for hours.” Liam’s face fell. “I didn’t really think anything of it, I just thought that’s what he wanted best.”
“Yeah,” Marigold sat down on the stool. “I didn’t even know he was struggling.”
Luke and Nathan nodded along with that, their own mumbled excuses falling after.
I stood tall, back straightened as I pointed to the windows outside. To the general direction of where he had to be. “You all were so caught up in your own lives that none of you noticed he was sinking in his. Open your eyes.”
My feet raced outside as I rushed to my car. If nothing else, I tried. If nothing else, I brought it to their attention. At the very, very least they would know they owed him almost as much as I did.
The door opened behind me but I didn’t slow down, my pink converses taking me straight to my car.
“Win,” I heard a deep voice shout and knew it had to be Adam. “Wait, just one sec.”
I didn’t stop entirely, but my feet did falter. “What?”
“Please, just.” He sighed. “Will you tell Crew I love him? His tone was hushed like he couldn’t bring himself to fully say it. “I don’t say it much, to anyone other than my wife really, but please, just let him know.”
I looked over my shoulder and almost agreed as I saw his grief-stricken face. The creases in his brow, the worry in his eyes. But I straightened back up and locked eyes with him instead.
“Tell him yourself.”