7. Fondness
FONDNESS
“You can’t avoid me forever.” Fisher’s deep voice washed over Drie with a familiarity that ached.
She took a steadying breath before glancing up from her notebook, her eyes widening slightly at the sight.
He looked… haggard. His hair was unkept, and his eyes were sunken.
Even his favorite hoodie appeared wrinkled as he stood beside the table, hands dangling at his sides.
“Fisher, are you sick?”
“No, of course not. Why would you ask that?”
Drie raked her eyes over him once more and shook her head. “No reason.”
His eyes narrowed, but he didn’t call her on it, opting instead to drag a neighboring chair up to her solitary study table with a deafening scrape.
Drie cringed as the sound echoed in the small campus library.
She preferred the larger building across the quad, as it received significantly more patronage, and the hushed buzz of activity was the perfect storm of white noise to quiet her mind—her own personal sanctuary.
After growing up in such a busy household, she needed the noise.
But since he worked there, she’d been unable to return—just one more thing she’d loved and lost in the breakup.
“How did you find me here?”
He dropped into the seat and fidgeted with one of the books she’d set out of the way, turning it over in his hands. “So you are hiding.”
“That’s not an answer.” Drie snatched it from his grasp, stacking it back on her side of the table.
Fisher tilted his head toward the circulation desk, where the staff librarian stood behind the counter, staring directly at their corner.
Once she noticed Drie’s attention, however, she straightened and turned to look at the desk computer, though her eyes flicked back guiltily twice more. “The library circuit is pretty small.”
Drie sighed. “Do you need something back? I thought I dropped everything off, but I may have missed something.”
“No, Drie.” Fisher leaned forward, eyes earnest. “It’s been weeks now. You’re not responding to my messages, I’m pretty sure you’ve blocked me on your socials, and you’re never home when I come by on Thursdays anymore. Why won’t you talk to me?”
Drie stared at him aghast, her brows raising a millimeter with each word he spoke.
Blocking him on social media and silencing his notifications on her phone may have been immature, but the audacity he had to be offended that she was no longer saving Thursdays for their standing date night was laughable.
Faced with the miserable idea of facing Thursdays alone, she’d accepted an offer to spend those evenings at the gym, focusing instead on surviving the thigh-destroying, cardio-intensive training plan her sister had sadistically crafted.
Drie figured that, if two negatives made a positive, then emotional misery and physical misery may possibly cancel each other out.
Turns out, that’s not how it worked at all.
But it did give her mind a distraction, and it dulled the pain, so she had kept going.
“Because we broke up?” she finally answered, her brows near her hairline.
“But we’re still friends.” He smiled weakly, stretching a hand across the table. The smile fell when she straightened her back, dropping her hands into her lap and out of reach. “You’ll always be my friend.”
“Fisher.” Drie searched his eyes for understanding and found nothing. “I understand that you don’t feel anything for me besides friendship, but I need some time to myself. Some separation to work through my own feelings. I need you to respect that.”
His gaze was unmoored, searching her face for a familiarity that she couldn’t bear to feel. “I’m worried you’ll never come back,” he whispered, leaning forward once more. “Can you promise me that we’ll be friends again if you take some time?”
She held his baby-blue eyes for a long moment, wishing she had the answers they both sought.
But with the weight of a broken heart overshadowing her ability to evaluate the situation rationally, she feared any agreement at that moment would be a lie.
“I can’t promise that. I need to think. I need space. ”
He was already shaking his head. “See? That’s what I’m talking about! If I give you space, you’ll forget about me.”
“Isn’t that supposed to be the point of a breakup?” She sighed.
“Maybe for some, but ours is just supposed to be a step back. Into friendship. We can work through it together. But for it to work, we have to do it together. It doesn’t bother me that you care for me in that way. I’m honored.” He paused. “I would never, like, tease you about it.”
“Fisher, do you hear the words coming out of your mouth?” Drie fought to keep her voice at a whisper. “I don’t want to see you all the time when looking at you hurts me. I don’t want to pretend to be just friends when what I actually want is to be more.”
“Okay.” He held his hands up. “Okay, I get it.” She sighed in short-lived relief, grateful that it finally seemed to connect for him—until he opened his mouth once more. “So let’s stay together. You are the best girlfriend I’ve ever had.”
Drie’s chin dropped. “You—Wha—Fisher, no.”
“Yes. This could work. You…love me. Right?” He spread his arms wide.
“Well, you can have me. Maybe I jumped the gun. Maybe the feelings will develop eventually on my end, which would be awesome, but it’s not like I need to have those feelings to be faithful.
Or to care for you. We had a great thing going. ”
She held a shaky hand up, palm outward. “Please stop. I don’t want you settling for me.”
He shook his head, the shaggy strands tickling his brow. “I can’t lose you, Drie. If you can’t just be friends with me, you can be my girlfriend.”
“How gracious of you,” she snapped, fighting the hysterical urge to laugh—or cry.
“So you demote me from girlfriend to friend. And now you want to pity-promote me back to fuck buddies? Or would that be a secondary demotion?” She cocked her head, tapping a finger over her pursed lips in faux contemplation.
Fisher shook his head in horror. “That’s not what I meant at all. We don’t have to do anything sexual if you don’t want to.”
She did laugh outright at that, earning a gentle shush from the librarian, who quickly turned away from Drie’s glare.
“Okay, hold up. Let me make sure I’m understanding this correctly.
” She snorted. “You want us to go back to being a couple, but with no future expectations for love or sex.” She paused, waiting for him to clarify or object.
He did neither. “What the hell is the point of being in a relationship, then?”
He frowned, his fingers tapping a fast beat against the table. “I don’t think a relationship based on a strong foundation of mutual friendship and loyalty and fondness sounds that terrible.”
“Fondness?” She took a slow breath, quelling the fury gathering in her chest. “This is the twenty-first fucking century. What you’re describing is not a romantic relationship. It’s just like—like, best friends in a weirdly exclusive situation who cockblock each other.”
She stood and began gathering her books, shoving papers and pens haphazardly into her backpack.
“I want to be the love of someone’s life, Fisher.
I have no desire to settle for less. If you can’t give me that, I can’t see how there is any future for us, friendship or otherwise.
And if you do care for me the way you say you do, then prove it.
Stop thinking about what you want from me.
Stop following me around and asking for things I’m not ready to give.
Let me heal from this clusterfuck of a breakup by leaving me the hell alone. ”
Once again, Drie turned on her heel and walked away from Fisher.
And once again, he let her go. That first evening, she’d been reeling from the shocking heartbreak of the bomb he’d dropped, barely able to put one foot in front of the other.
This time, however, she found herself pleasantly surprised by how different it felt.
How freeing it was to speak her mind, to vocalize the truths in her heart, and to lay bare the hurt fueling her anger.
As she stepped out of the library, Drie paused, enjoying the soft breeze that cooled her cheeks and tickled the ends of her hair, before moving on to stir up loose leaves in the campus quad. Then she loosened a heavy breath and moved forward, settling into the peace of bittersweet closure.