Chapter 15
fifteen
. . .
Ceci
Wish has been radio silent since our dinner that wasn’t.
No texts.
No messages.
No nothing.
I haven’t even seen his avatar online since he stood me up. It’s like he’s avoiding me.
So when his contact flickers green a few minutes before midnight, my heart catches in my throat. Finally, I can get some answers. Finally, I can know why.
He sends me a call request, and I answer it before it can finish the first ring.
“Hey, you.”
Although I try to keep my tone steady, I wonder if he can hear how breathless I am. How eager I am to hear from him, and how fucking pissed I am in equal measure.
“Hey.” His voice is quiet. Subdued. None of his usual grumpy vitality.
“Are you done avoiding me?”
He better have a damn good reason for bailing.
“I wasn’t avoiding you,” he says.
I scoff. “You were.”
Silence stretches between us, weighted with expectation. He owes me an answer. I deserve an answer.
“Okay, yes, I was.” His heavy exhale makes my heart stutter.
“Why?”
He doesn’t pretend to misunderstand my question. Why didn’t he show up? Why didn’t he have the courtesy to tell me he wouldn’t be there? I had to push him to even answer me.
“I just… I couldn’t.”
“You’re the one who suggested we meet up.”
I may have said it in passing, but he is the one who named the time and place. He wanted this, at least at one point.
“I know. I’m sorry.” He sounds defeated.
White-hot rage burns through me. I was looking forward to finally meeting him. Yes, I was nervous as fuck, but I pushed through. I was there. And he didn’t even bother to tell me he wouldn’t be there until an hour after we were supposed to meet.
“I just want to know why.” My voice breaks. Tears spring to my eyes, and I wipe them away. I don’t want to cry over this. Over him. I refuse to cry over a waste of my time.
My stomach twists. Wish isn’t a waste of time. He hurt me. There’s a difference.
“I don’t have a good answer for you.”
“That’s not good enough, Wish.”
I hear him gulp over the line.
“Did you go to the pub? Did you see me and decide you weren’t interested?”
“No. Not at all,” he hurries to say.
“Then why?”
“I wanted to go. I wanted to be there.”
“But you didn’t want to be there enough to go.”
“It was a lot of pressure. I’m not…” He pauses, searching for the words. “What if you saw me and decided you want nothing to do with me? I don’t think I’d be able to stand losing you. I like our friendship.”
“And you thought if you saw me in person, that would ruin it?”
He chuckles, the sound bitter. “Or if you saw me and decided never to speak to me again.”
“I’d never do that. I don’t care what you look like. I care who you are.”
“And I’m the type of guy who ghosted you because I couldn’t find the courage to confront my fears.
” He lets out a grunt of frustration. “I’m not like that.
Except now apparently I am. I shut down.
Is that what you want to hear? That I curled up in a ball on the floor of my shower on the verge of a panic attack?
That I was so anxious over it, I puked three times that night?
That I’m so sick to my stomach, I’ve barely slept since? ”
“Wish…”
“I’m sorry, okay?” he snaps. “I’m sorry I’m such a fucking mess I couldn’t bring myself to meet you in person. That I ghosted. That I hurt you.” His voice cracks. “I never wanted to hurt you, Annie.”
“I know you didn’t.”
But he did. And I don’t know if I can forgive that.
“I think I’m going to sign off for the night,” I finally say. “I need some space.”
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, his pain audible. “I’m so sorry.”
“Okay.”
I’m not about to let him off the hook. Not so easily. Not when he could have just said he was having doubts. Not when he could have told me he wouldn’t be there, up-front and honest. Not when I could have talked him through the panic attack, helped him work through it.
But he didn’t reach out. He withdrew.
And that’s what hurts the most. He didn’t trust me. He didn’t believe I was worthy of confiding in. For the last seven years, he’s been my constant, my support network. But he didn’t allow me to be the same for him.
Why not? Does he not trust me? Does he not think I’m as invested in this friendship as he is?
One thing’s for certain: I may forgive him, but I won’t forget. The trust I had in him has fractured, and I don’t know if it can ever be truly repaired.
Book club has always been a safe place. A welcoming place. But right now, it’s not bringing me comfort. It’s making me itchy. Not physically, but existentially.
All of my friends are happy in committed relationships. They’ve found partners who support them and love them unconditionally. Even the ones who swore they didn’t want a relationship, like Bex and Sadie, have settled down.
Arielle has Asher.
Johanna has Sullivan.
Audrey has Seb.
Vanessa has Sven.
Rachel has Jake.
Sadie has Jared.
Hailey has Ryan.
Bex has Nick.
Even Viv and Elsy, two of our members who moved on to new cities, have found their respective happily ever afters with Tony and Wyatt.
And then there’s me. Perpetually single. Perpetually alone.
Usually, that doesn’t bother me. These people are such amazing friends, I never felt like I was spare parts. That they didn’t want me around.
Until Wish stood me up. My best friend for seven years had a panic attack over the thought of meeting me. I’m so repulsive that he made himself puke instead of having dinner with me.
I absolutely hate that he’s hurting. That he struggled with it. But I’m so fucking pissed that he couldn’t bring himself to talk to me about his fears. That’s what we do: We talk.
And he stayed silent.
The resentment eats at me, a poison leaching into all of my other interactions with the people I care about most. I’m lost in my thoughts, chugging my drink like it’s my job. Nobody has asked me how I am or why I’m subdued tonight. I don’t have the energy to be bubbly. I just can’t.
Hailey nudges me as chatter swirls around us, ten different side conversations going on all at once.
“You okay? You seem a little down today.”
“I’m fine.” I muster a smile, but I can’t fool her. Letting out a sigh, I scoot my chair closer to her wheelchair. “It’s been a tough couple of days.”
My friend frowns. “I’m sorry, honey. Do you want to talk about it?”
No. I want to bottle it up.
But as I take a swig of my mostly gin, very little tonic, I know that’s not healthy. I joke about unhealthy coping mechanisms, but the truth is, I’ve done enough of the work to know what is and isn’t a good idea.
“Someone disappointed me, and I don’t know how to reconcile the person I thought I knew with the person they turned out to be.”
“That’s incredibly tough.” She clucks sympathetically. “When someone shows you who they are, believe them.”
“Thanks, Maya Angelou.” I wink at her. “That’s the problem. I have to believe them. And I don’t want to. I’ve built them up so much in my head, and if they turn out not to be the person I know…”
She lets out a heavy sigh. “Yeah. It’s hard to wrap your head around.”
“I guess it goes to show that no matter how well you think you know someone, they’ll still surprise you.”
Hailey cocks her head. “But isn’t the reverse true too? They can still pleasantly surprise you just as much as it can be a bad one. There’s still capacity for good.”
I blow out a breath. “If you say so.”
“Maybe this was just a blip. Maybe there were extenuating circumstances.”
Is a panic attack an extenuating circumstance? I want to be sympathetic, I do. They can come out of nowhere, and they’re not easy to navigate on your own, especially if you’re not used to them.
But it’s the combination of the ghosting and the avoidance that are pissing me off. If Wish didn’t want to be there, he could have told me. I wouldn’t have been mad. Annoyed, maybe. But I’d have understood.
What I can’t understand is why he didn’t respect me enough to tell me he was having doubts. That he wasn’t ready. I never would have pushed him to do something he wasn’t comfortable with. I’d have given him the out.
Yet he couldn’t give me the same courtesy. And that fucking stings.