23. Are you really ghosting me?
Are you really ghosting me?
When Hunter and his mom got to her building, Catherine stopped abruptly on the sidewalk. “Shoot. I forgot I need cream for coffee tomorrow morning.”
“I’ll go get it. You go inside and relax,” Hunter said and smiled at her.
“You’re treating me like a princess because you’re worried,” Catherine noted. “I can walk to the store. It’s a block away.”
“I’m being a good son. And also, I want to stock up on Canadian candy,” Hunter lied. “So I’ll buy that at the same time.”
“When is your flight tomorrow?”
“Just after noon.” It didn’t matter. He wouldn’t be on it.
“Okay. I’m waking you up tomorrow to say goodbye before I go to work, so don’t be grumpy.” Catherine patted the side of his face with her gloved hand. “Thank you for running to the store. I really am exhausted, and I’m gonna go straight to bed. Read a little and pass out early.”
“Okay. I’ll be sure to put the cream in the fridge.
” He bent down spontaneously and hugged her.
She felt tiny in his arms because she was.
She was barely five foot three and probably about a hundred pounds.
She lost a lot of weight when she was sick last time, and it never really came back.
God, if she were sick again, how could her body handle it?
“Stop. I’m fine,” she muttered, but she squeezed him tightly anyway. “I love you.”
“You too. Now go read, and I’ll be back in a sec.”
Hunter let go and waited until she was safely up the stairs and in her apartment before turning and walking to the grocery store a block north.
The air was the level of frigid that he’d loathed as a kid because your nose stuck together if you breathed too hard and your cheeks stung constantly.
He used his phone to distract himself, pulling it out of his coat pocket and turning it on for the first time all day.
His intention was to Google breast cancer reoccurrence stats, but as soon as his Face ID activated his phone, the screen filled with missed calls and messages. All from Colby.
The first text had come at six in the morning. And there were others until almost eight.
Colby
I hate this. Can we talk? Please.
Colby
Why are we fighting? We didn’t do anything wrong.
Colby
Please answer.
And then two missed FaceTimes and a voicemail.
“Hunter, can we please not blow up this friendship? Can we just not? That first night you promised me this wouldn’t happen. Come on. I’ve never… had a friend like you. Please answer the fucking phone. I’m exhausted, and I won’t sleep until we talk this through.”
More texts started up around ten.
Colby:
I wish I knew where your mom lived because I would go there now.
Colby
We leave at noon today for Ottawa. Can I see you before?
Colby
Are you really ghosting me?
And then there was nothing else. And it was almost nine in the evening, so Colby was in Ottawa.
Hunter felt his stress and anxiety rise so fast and so furiously that he had to fight not to puke up his dinner.
He leaned on a bus shelter that thankfully had no one in it, closed his eyes, and took several deep breaths.
The Depanneur’s neon sign was glowing just in front of him, but he was worried he would get sick in one of the aisles if he walked in right then, so he waited almost five minutes.
Just as he was going to shove his phone in his pocket and go get the cream, he got another text.
Colby
I’ll move my stuff out as soon as I’m back in LA. And I won’t bother you again.
Hunter shoved his phone back in his pocket, but it took a minute because his hand was shaking.
He walked into the grocery store and felt oddly disoriented.
Like he’d never set foot in a store before.
The shelves seemed too high and stacked with too much stuff.
The lights were too bright. It was too empty and yet too noisy.
He stumbled around for a few minutes looking for the coolers with the milk products.
Colby was moving out. They were cowards, and now they weren’t even friendly cowards.
Hunter grabbed a carton of coffee creamer and shuffled to the register.
It felt like a monumental effort to get his feet moving.
A guy in the snack aisle gave him a leery glance, but Hunter was too busy trying to get his lungs to expand to care.
They had a self-checkout option, thank Christ, so he didn’t have to deal with another human being.
He wanted smokes, though, and those were behind the glass with the cashier.
He took one step that way and felt dizzy, so he paid at the self-checkout and tripped his way back into the cold night.
By the alley next to the store was a homeless guy under a bunch of blankets. Hunter stumbled over toward him and dug in his pocket as he did. “Do you have a smoke?”
The guy looked up and glared. Hunter pulled a five and some coins out of his pocket. “One clope. Pour l’argent.”
Hunter asked for a cigarette in French and offered money.
The guy was still glaring, but he put his hand into the pocket of his stained jacket and pulled out a pack of Player’s Lights.
With shaking fingers, Hunter pulled one from the four that were left, and the guy tossed him a lighter.
It landed in the snow, but Hunter managed to pick it up, get his smoke lit, and hand the lighter along with the money to the man. With a shaky “merci,” he walked away.
He coughed on the three drags he took of the cigarette, not because he had forgotten how to smoke but because he had apparently forgotten how to breathe.
And then he sat at the empty bus stop, pulled his phone out again, and FaceTimed Colby.
Because Hunter truly thought he might actually pass away, and that’s who he wanted to see before he died.
Colby’s face filled the screen almost instantly. His eyes were glassy and red-rimmed. His cheeks flushed. “You called.”
“Yeah. I… I can’t breathe.” He tried to take another drag and coughed so intensely that his eyes were watering, and his shaking hand dropped the smoke. “Fuck.”
He lunged to grab it before it went out. Luckily, the snow was like ice and too hard to dampen the cigarette.
“What the hell is wrong?” Colby didn’t sound like Colby. His voice was thicker, and his words all seemed attached to each other.
“I don’t know. I had steak for dinner and a pretzel, and I’m like dying. Should I puke? I should.”
Hunter leaned forward and realized the creamer was in front of him, on the ground between his feet. Puking on that wasn’t a smart idea. He leaned back instead, closed his eyes, and willed himself not to puke.
“Is this a panic attack?” Colby’s voice filled the air from Hunter’s phone still gripped in his left hand, resting on his knee. “I think this is a panic attack. Take a deep breath.”
“I can’t.” Hunter felt his eyes get wet, but he wasn’t coughing.
Or choking. And that made his heart beat even faster because he was not going to fucking cry alone in a bus stop.
God, why was he such a piece of shit? He was sick of being emotional.
He was sick of being lonely. He was sick of being awkward.
And bisexual. And being such a stress case for his potentially, probably, sick mom. “My mom might have cancer.”
“What? Holy fuck. What?” Colby’s words were still mushy, even though his eyes seemed to be less glassy when Hunter dared to open his own and look at the screen. Colby was so fucking good-looking. Fucking hell.
“She told me tonight she needs a biopsy. Again.”
“Again?”
“She was sick when I was in high school.”
“You never told me,” Colby said softly.
“I don’t know everything about you either,” Hunter replied and paused to try to take a deep breath. It almost worked. Almost. “I mean fuck, are we even real friends?”
Colby looked like he’d been slapped. He swallowed, and his eyebrows pinched as he said.
“You know I have two brothers. And that things are strained with my family. And I had a sister, almost. I told you stuff. I know you’re adopted.
I know about the guy in high school you did stuff with.
We are friends. Why the fuck would you ask that? It hurts.”
“Because I’m fucking spiraling. Sorry. I fucking suck,” Hunter said and shook his head. “Why are things rough with your family? You talk around it but never about it. I bet Briar knows, so tell me too. Please. I need to think of something other than my mom.”
Colby sighed and shook his head, and Hunter thought he was going to stay silent. But then he wet his lips and spoke. “My dad found gay websites in my browser history when I was sixteen.”
“Oh. Fuck.”
“Yeah. Queer curious kid was not something Andy Keaton had on his bucket list,” Colby went on, words still slightly slurred.
“He put parental locks on the internet, confiscated my iPad, and my laptop could only be used in the kitchen, supervised, and only for schoolwork. He said it was because he was worried about computer viruses and pedophiles, but he also started acting like I was a piece of furniture. Something he had to walk around and live with, but ignored,” Colby explained.
Hunter realized the cigarette was almost done. He flicked off the very long ash and attempted another drag. This time he managed not to cough.
“The best part? He actually caught my brother watching gay porn on my iPad, and Atlas said he stumbled across it by mistake because it was in my history.”
“Shit. Your brother tattled?”
“My brother, the one currently planning to marry a woman, was looking at gay porn for himself. I was a convenient excuse because I’d confided in Atlas that I thought I was—maybe, probably—gay.
So he used my iPad, and then he blamed me when he was caught.
And now my dad pretends I don’t exist, and my brother is still his favorite.
Anyway, why am I telling you this nightmare? ”
“Because my mom might be dying and you just text me that you’re moving out and my body decided to try and shut down because I don’t want any of this to be happening,” Hunter replied.
“Can you breathe again?” Hunter tried, and this time, his lungs almost filled to capacity. He exhaled loudly and slowly. Colby shot him a soft, sad smile. “Good.”
“Are you drunk?”
“Yup. And high,” Colby announced. “Not that any of it is helping. Life still sucks.”
“You’ve got a record deal, a tour, and a talented girlfriend. Your life does not suck,” Hunter replied, and Colby gave him a stare that said fuck off as Hunter flicked his cigarette butt into a snowbank.
Colby sniffed. “I’ve been a fucking nightmare ever since you left.
Ask the guys. Ask Hannah. Ask Ford. I almost didn’t get on the train to Ottawa.
I wanted to try to find your mom’s house.
Did you know that there are literally about one million Laws in the Montreal area, according to Google? And I don’t even know her first name.”
“Catherine Amaia Gibson.” It felt nice to say her full name. “She lives in an area called Westmount, and she never took my dad’s last name. And she may be dying.”
“And she might not be. Not more than any of us are. It might be okay,” Colby told him. “And if it isn’t okay… you’ll be there for her. She beat it once, right? She can do it again. And I’ll be there for you.”
“Because you’re still my friend?” Hunter asked. He was absolutely freezing now. So cold he could barely keep holding the phone. He picked up the carton of creamer and got off the bench. He started to walk home.
“Yeah.”
They didn’t speak for a second, and then another, and it started to feel heavy, so Hunter cleared his throat. “I’m sorry your family is so… difficult.”
“Me too.” Colby smiled with no dimple to be found. “It’s okay, though. I believe in found family.”
“Found family?”
“It’s a term for people who are family, but not blood.”
Hunter thought about that. He liked it a lot. The idea. He was close to his mom and relatively close to his dad, but he didn’t have much affinity for anyone else in his family. Maybe he needed some found family too. “Can best friends be found family?”
“Hope so because you’re the only branch on my family tree at the moment,” Colby replied and paused, his face getting serious. “Well, you and Briar. And maybe Hannah.”
Hunter felt a sharp pain at the mention of Hannah’s name. His shoulders sagged a little, more anxiety dissipating while being replaced with something that felt heavy, like defeat.
“I have to go. I think I should probably puke. The room is spinning,” Colby announced, and Hunter’s brow pinched in worry.
“I’ll stay on the phone. Bring me with you. I want to make sure you’re okay,” Hunter said.
And as he climbed the stairs to his mom’s place, he watched through the phone as Colby dropped his head into the toilet and wretched. Hunter said consoling words to his best friend, even after the phone tipped over and he was looking at nothing but a bathroom ceiling.
Finally, after Hunter had kicked off his boots and hung his coat and put the creamer in the fridge, the apartment was silent and dark, with only a sliver of light appearing from under his mother’s closed bedroom door at the end of the hall.
Colby reappeared, wiping his mouth on the sleeve of his sweatshirt.
“Better?”
“Yeah, I guess. Not great though.”
“Brush your teeth,” Hunter advised. “It’ll help.”
Hunter walked down the hall to his mother’s guest bedroom.
He kicked the door shut behind him and dropped onto the bed he hadn’t bothered to make earlier.
He watched Colby brush his teeth, then wipe his mouth on his sweatshirt, then yank it off and leave it on the bathroom floor. “You got water? Drink it.”
Colby padded out of his bathroom, carrying his phone, and got a water bottle from the mini fridge. He propped his phone up on something, and Hunter watched his half-naked bestie and tried not to let his mind wander. “Why are you so drunk and high?”
“Just weed,” Colby murmured and put the half-empty water bottle on the table. “And, like, a bottle of Jack.”
“You hate whiskey,” Hunter reminded him, and he nodded.
“I thought we blew this up.”
“We did,” Hunter said. “But we’re fine.”
“Are we?” Colby fell back onto the bed.
“Sleep on your side,” Hunter demanded, ignoring the question. Colby rolled over. “When do you get back to Los Angeles?”
“The tour should end in two weeks,” Colby replied, his voice heavy but less slurred. “I can go back to the apartment?”
“It’s your home, Colby.”
“Good. We’re still friends and roommates,” Colby murmured, and Hunter knew he was half passed out.
He took his own phone and propped it up against the base of the light on his night table, then stripped down to his underwear without getting off the bed.
After kicking his discarded clothes off the mattress, he crawled under the duvet and fell asleep watching his best friend snore through the phone.