AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“No.” It comes out more defensive than I mean for it to.
Jessie raises her eyebrows at me.
“We left on Wednesday. We saw each other at rehearsal on Thursday and Friday night. Outside of rehearsal, we just haven’t had a ton of time to see each other, but I’m not doing it on purpose.”
“It’s Sunday,” Mac says.
“Thank you, Captain Obvious.”
I ignore the look Jessie and Mac give each other, finishing my gyro by licking my fingers clean of the tzatziki sauce on them. I hate the way these two know me. Especially Jessie. She knows I’m skirting the truth. Of course I’ve been avoiding Ian as much as possible. I don’t know how to be around him right now. It feels too vulnerable. I’m liable to say words I don’t mean. We just need to get through the performance at the end of the week, and then I can deal with it.
My phone dings. A text from Ian.
Happy performance week <3 thinking of you. Have fun at roomie night.
I’ve gotten daily texts from him since Wednesday. I usually respond, but today, all I have in me is a deep sigh. I set my phone back down, screen-side down.
“So what happens after your performance this week? It’s on Friday, right?” Mac asks.
“Yeah, it’s Friday, but I don’t know,” I say, because it’s the truth. “We probably just . . . go about our lives. It’s not like we’re together.”
“I bet he’s going to have a DTR with you,” Jessie says.
“DTR?” Mac asks.
“‘Define the relationship,’” I say, picking out another crispy fry. “And that’s fine. But he’s going to be disappointed, because I’m not the relationship type, and everything he did last week for me and my mom was amazing, but it doesn’t make him my boyfriend. And the sex was great, but it doesn’t mean anything.”
I choke on a morsel of French fry, or maybe my own words, and have to take a sip of my Diet Coke just to keep talking. It’s a fucking lie, and choking like that is the karma I deserve.
“He’ll be disappointed for, like, a week and then move on,” I say once I’ve recovered.
“I don’t know . . .” Mac says, eyeing Jessie. “Guys don’t just say ‘I love you’ casually.”
“I’m sorry, but he was a virgin up until a week ago,” I say. “Saying ‘I love you’ after the first time you have sex is such an ‘I just had sex for the first time’ thing to do.”
“Okay, even if that is true, you said it yourself—he showed up for you and your mom in a big way. Actions speak louder than words. Are his actions not screaming how he feels about you?” Jessie argues.
I don’t understand why my friends seem to be taking Ian’s side in all this. I didn’t tell them about this moment between me and Ian for them to gang up on me and tell me why he’s so fucking perfect and point out all my flaws. After the past week and a half, I don’t have the energy for this.
“It doesn’t matter how into me he is,” I say with authority. “We’re deeply incompatible, and I think he keeps forgetting that.” I eye Jessie and Mac pointedly.
Apparently, Ian’s not the only one who keeps forgetting I don’t want a boyfriend.
“Sorry to bail, but I think I’m gonna retire early,” I say.
Crumbling up the remaining fries in the wrapper from my gyro, I toss it in the trash. I close my bedroom door and flop onto my bed, turning my phone to silent.
The problem with living with your best friend and her boyfriend is that when things like this inevitably happen, there are really not a lot of options for getting space. I have to pretend like I don’t hear them talking through the paper-thin apartment walls. I toss my arm over my face to block out the light and pretend like it blocks out the sound too.
As frustrated as I am that Jessie and Mac can read me, I’m equally as frustrated that they don’t seem to understand the situation the way I do. Ian and I were always headed toward an inevitable end, with or without his confession. It’s not about the “I love you”—it’s about wanting different things; wanting different lives. He wants to be a husband, and I want to be free.
It can’t have been more than three minutes before there’s a knock on my door. It opens and closes again, and I peek out from under my arm to see Jessie.
“Want some company?” she asks, not waiting for me to answer before she climbs up on the bed with me and lies down.
I move to adjust for her. Tempted as I am to kick her out, it’s almost Thanksgiving, which means this semester is almost over. Which means the year is almost over. Which means I won’t get to make room for her forever.
Two people on a twin bed is cozy, but Jessie and I always talk like this, sharing space while we chat. Freshman year, we’d stay up until the wee hours of the morning talking and giggling everynight. I’ve never had a friend I was close to like this, which is why I don’t like to think or talk about a future that doesn’t include platonic cuddling and talking about our lives.
