29. Chapter 29
Chapter 29
“ I take it last night didn’t go well,” Hannah says, standing over me. I’m lying on the bed, my face focused on the ceiling.
“What gave it away?”
“Your face looks like you’ve been crying all night. Unless I’ve got it wrong and they were tears of joy?”
I scoot over on the bed and she lies next to me. “Not good,” I say, my voice breaking up.
“What happened?”
“He … rejected me.”
“What? I’ll kill him,” she says, exasperated. “What did he say?”
I take a ragged breath, tears falling down the sides of my face. “It’s what he didn’t say.”
“Talk to me.”
I tell her the conversation, the one that’s been playing over and over again in my head, on repeat, like a broken record. He doesn’t want me. He only used me.
That’s what it feels like. All the texts we sent back and forth. All that time together. That was just him distracting himself from his loss, him trying not to feel.
“Wow, he’s got a lot of nerve,” she says.
“Yeah,” I say.
My phone, which is down by the end of my bed where I threw it, beeps. I just lie there, ignoring it .
“Do you want to see who that is?”
“Not really,” I say.
She sits up and grabs my phone, then looks at it and lies back down. “It’s Chase.”
“Yep,” I say. I knew it was him. Like some stupid sixth sense. It’s not the first text I’ve gotten from him since I heartbrokenly left his car last night.
Chase: Please call me
Chase: Can we talk?
Chase: Please talk to me
Chase: Please, Maggie
I’m sure the one he sent just now is just a repeat. Or maybe he’s at the jump, telling me he wishes I were there with him. To hold his hand, or whatever he needed from me, like the safety net that I was to him. I could help him not feel his feelings there too.
It doesn’t feel like me to not text him back. It feels weird. Like an itch I refuse to scratch. But I’m not ready to talk yet.
I sniffle, needing a tissue. “The part that hurts the most was his rejection.”
“Did he actually reject you?”
“Not with his words. He … changed the subject.”
“Oh, gosh.”
“I know.”
“I’m sorry, Mags. I’m honestly surprised.”
“I am too. I guess I shouldn’t be.”
“Maybe …” Hannah says.
“Maybe what?”
She lets out a breath through her nose. “If he was doing all that to avoid his feelings, then maybe he’s avoiding how he feels about you too? ”
I sigh. “I don’t know. I want to think that, but I think it would just give me hope. And I need to not hope right now.”
“I’m sorry, Mags,” she says again. She reaches over and taps me twice on the arm. All the comfort I’ll get from her. I’m grateful for it.
We lie in silence. My eyes find the heart on my ceiling and it doesn’t bring me any peace. I see it for what it is: an accidental shape made by a texture gun. That’s all it’s ever been. Maybe I should stop with all this fanciful thinking that Chase was meant to have my mom’s number or that all this was some sign or something. I need to grow up. I need to get real.
“I think he’s just not that into me,” I say finally. My words sound weak with a dash of pathetic.
“Guys don’t spend that much time with girls that they aren’t into,” Hannah says.
“I don’t know if I believe that. Anyway, he’s going to London next week. He’ll be gone, and I can just … do … I don’t know.”
“Dawson?” Hannah says, and then lets out a giggle.
“Right. Dawson. Too bad I told him no last week.”
“That was dumb of you. You should have kept him around just in case.”
“That sounds like a sweet thing to do,” I say, with an eye roll, my voice full of sarcasm. “Anyway, now that I’ve had all these feelings for Chase, I realize that all it ever was with Dawson was lust.”
“He’s easy to lust after.”
I snort laugh.
“Ready for a hard question?” Hannah asks.
“No.”
“If you knew it wasn’t lust with Chase … was it … love? ”
“I said I didn’t want the hard question.”
“How long have you known me?”
“Too long.”
I let my body feel heavy, sagging into my bed. Tears spring at the corners of my eyes and I feel them roll down the sides of my face and into my hair and ears. “I don’t know what love feels like.”
“Well, I fancied myself in love with the Cheating Douchewaffle, but I’m not so sure about that now. So, I can’t help you there.”
I think about it for a few seconds. “I don’t know. It’s definitely the most heartbroken I’ve ever felt. At least compared to other relationships.”
I’ve felt a lot of heartbreak this past year … watching my mom fade away, watching her take her last breath. This feels different than that. It’s like a different part of my heart this time.
“What’s the saying?” Hannah asks. “The bigger the jump, the harder the fall?”
I side-eye her. “Pretty sure it’s ‘the bigger they are, the harder they fall.’ Not sure that’s what you were going for.”
She sighs. “I was trying to make it a jumping-out-of-a-plane metaphor. Like, bringing it all together.”
I reach over and give her a couple of her signature impersonal pats on the arm. “Good try.”
She turns her body to the side so she’s facing me. “What are you going to do?”
“Nothing,” I say. “I’m going to go to work tomorrow and just live my life.”
“That sounds so boring.”
“It sure does.”