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For a solid two seconds, I’m just frozen, mouth partly open, trying to make up my mind how to answer. Denial would be just plain stupid, not to mention pointless. Still, transparent as the pathetic truth is, I really don’t want to have to say it out loud. Not even to Gemma.
It’s Cyril’s quavering, pleading meow that saves me. At least for the moment.
He’s standing in front of the couch, and when he sees me notice him, he gives another hopeful call, stiffly arching his back and rubbing his face and side along the plaid material. Probably leaving behind a trail of pale grey fur.
“You want up, lovvie?” I ask, turning my full attention on him and away from Gemma.
Cyril butts his head against my hand, letting out a raspy chirp of agreement as I reach down to scratch behind his ears. It’s the same sound he’s always made when I scratch him there, ever since he was a kitten.
Careful not to jostle him, I lift him from the floor and set him gently down on the cushions, trying to focus on how hard he’s purring, rather than how light and bony he feels.
At his last appointment, the vet assured me that, for an eighteen-year-old cat, there’s nothing wrong with him beyond the expected arthritis, but I can’t help hating how thin he’s gotten lately.
I’m patting the center of the fleecy blanket I’ve just laid out for him, trying to coax him to lie there, rather than on the plain sofa cushion that can’t be quite as comfy, when Gemma clears her throat with a loud, pointed sound directly behind me.
“Don’t you use that sweet old cat to dodge me,” she bumps me aside, scooping Cyril up and giving him a gentle cuddle before depositing him on the blanket.
Instantly, his purring doubles in volume as he starts shakily kneading his paws against the soft material.
“I want an answer. No getting all defensive and refusing to talk to me about it this time. Did you come back here because of that blobfish douchenoggin?”
“That, Gemma,” I point at her, trying my darndest to actually pull off a decent scowl for once. “That is why I was upset when you asked me before. He’s not a blobfish douchenoggin.”
The fact that I don’t even bat an eye at the absurdity of the insult is testament to how fully I’ve resigned myself to Gemma’s eccentricities. It’s the anti-Myles hostility behind the unconventional name calling that I can’t let slide. Not that that’s anything new either…
“That’s not an answer. And if he’s not a blobfish douchenoggin, it’s only because the name’s too good for him.
Once you gave up hope of him ever calling you or answering any of your calls after your family moved back to Seattle, you hid in your room and cried for pretty much the rest of the summer. ”
She raises her eyebrows, daring me to deny it. Pointless really, considering the fact that her accusation is born of having caught me doing precisely what she’s just said. Multiple times.
“I was fifteen and dramatic.” So what if the decade that’s passed hasn’t taken a fraction as much of the sting out of my memories of that summer as it should have done. “That doesn’t make him a blobfish douche-whatever you said. We were kids, and things happen.”
“Ghosting your best friend when he’s already heartbroken to be moving away from you doesn’t just happen.”
Her arms are crossed over her chest and she’s glaring so hard by now that, even though I know the death stare she’s giving isn’t for me, I can’t help feeling just the teeniest bit afraid.
Being on the wrong side of Gemma when she goes into protective mode isn’t something I want to experience.
Not that it’s likely, given that I’m the only one I’ve ever seen her get like this over, but still.
“He was fifteen. He wasn’t supposed to be mature.”
Ugh, even to me it sounds weak. The broken record of justification that plays over and over in my head whenever I think about the way I’d crumbled, bit by bit, as day after day passed by without any contact from him.
How I’d worried about him. The way I’d ran through every worst-case scenario in my mind with increasing panic until, after a week, his dad had finally picked up the umpteenth time I’d called.
Crumbling had turned to shattering then, when he’d grunted into the phone in response to my panicked questions that Myles was just busy. That maybe I’d be better off not to keep calling, because Myles would’ve called me back if he’d wanted to.
And yet, I mean what I’ve just said to Gemma.
Believe it, even. Because he’s Myles, and no matter how hard I’ve tried in the private spaces of my own head, I can’t bring myself to write him off as whatever new flavor of weird insult Gemma has for him any given time his name sneaks into our conversations.
“Plus, you know he’s not even here,” I go on, highly aware that I’m justifying to myself every last bit as much as to Gemma. “He left seven years ago. As soon as he graduated from high school. Just like he always said he would. He’s somewhere in Southeast Asia now.”
“Yes, I know that, Charlie. Because you told me. It’s the fact that you know it that worries me.”
“His socials are all set to public,” I mutter, giving Cyril another scratch behind his ears.
“Yes, but darling, you still have to look him up to see them,” she points out in a perfect imitation of my best patient teacher voice that turns genuine as she closes a soft hand around my wrist. “You really never did get over him, did you?”
Once again, denial is pointless. Mutely, I shake my head, trying to ignore the painful tightening of my throat. Getting all choked up over something that happened when I was practically the age of the students I now teach is beyond ridiculous, and yet, here we are.
And here I am. Back in the place it all happened, trying to delude myself into hoping that being here, of all things, could possibly help.