62. Chapter Sixty-Two
Chapter Sixty-Two
Mac
The second we stepped off the plane, I started looking for him.
When we piled out of the bus. Joined the party thrown in our honor.
I haven’t stopped looking for him in every crowd, in every stranger that has passed me by, for over a fucking year.
Years.
In my head, I’ve ran through every conversation I want to have with him should I ever see him again. And in the darkness of a desperate night, I hoped that he’d apologize. That it was genuine enough for me to believe it and I’d find it in me to forgive him for shutting me out. For not fighting for what he seemed so desperate to want that night. He got it, what he wanted . In those weak moments, those dark nights, we’d fall into bed. Finally … finally hold each other. Kiss like it means more than just appeasing a curiosity.
I’d show him what it was like to be with the right person, and he’d show me what it was like to be loved by Jordan Kauffman.
But those instances got fewer and farther between with each day that went by.
Fantasies never meant to see the light of day once his ass hightailed it out of my hotel room for the last time.
He was just fucking gone .
Quit.
Left.
Supposedly, no one could find him, not even the security crew. Which I don’t believe for a minute. They know shit.
They just didn’t have it in them to tell me his choice was final, despite his parting words to me.
He chose to leave me.
“ Try to fucking smile,” Dare murmurs into my ear. His hand tightens on my ribs and my skin crawls.
My smile is mostly a sneer aimed in his direction. “We aren’t friends, dipshit.”
Cameras flash in my face, capturing the two of us together, leaving spots behind. I pull away from him before they even fade.
Yells are directed toward me, but I don’t stop weaving through the crowd until the storefront comes into view and I stop dead.
It’s like I can feel the rain all over again.
Cold and pelting me in the face. Soaking into my clothes and seeping all the way to my bones until the fate of us was etched into them like cave markings, telling the story of where a friendship ended, for all of time.
Except no one knows the story but me.
That of those friends … one lost more than the other.
That a piece of me shriveled up and died beneath the storm clouds. Another piece gone the night he begged me for three days. And the last gone the night he showed up, pumped me full of so much hope for him, for us , only to quit.
To not pick me.
That had done me in; to have him quit after everything.
I don’t blame myself. I don’t. But if I could go back to that night … before it all went to shit … I’d at least tell him how much his friendship means— meant —to me.
That I’d take him as that over losing him completely any fucking day. How I always have.
And that just … makes the churning of my gut even worse.
Because I have to let him fucking go.
Squaring my shoulders, I force a breath into frozen lungs and light a joint.
Take a step.
Fake a smile.
And hope like hell I can forget.