Forgetting Charlotte

His best friend David

Chapter eight: His best friend David

David and I were sitting in the cafeteria in the bottom floor of the building. He had suggested we go to lunch to talk in private and I had suggested staying in the same building, as I could feel the nausea increasing.  I was staring at his sky blue eyes but I don’t think he was noticing.  If he did he was playing it off very well. I wondered if he knew why he had left, if he knew where he had left to. I wondered if he would tell me.  Somehow I sensed as I looked at David that he wouldn’t, yet I couldn’t help wishing I had the courage to ask.

“It’s nice to see you Charlie, I really didn’t know what to expect when Jolene called me and said you needed to talk to me.” He was looking at me with the same sympathetic look that had become a mirror image to me lately.

“She told you I needed to talk to you?” I was slightly confused at how Jolene had the time to meddle in my life but figured I would explore that thought later.

“Yeah, well when she called I was already kind of considering checking on you anyways so it just gave me a reason.” David started at me with hesitation.

“Why?” I asked in confusion

“Why what?”

“Why were you thinking about checking on me?” I had convinced myself that with his exit it had voided my acquaintance with David as well. They were best friends, so much that at times I felt that David watched over me when he wasn’t there.

David shifted uncomfortably in his seat, “Well the last time I saw you, you didn’t seem so great, so… I was just worried.” He looked out the window of the cafeteria. A faint memory of David’s face pulling covers over me flashed in my mind.  I had forgotten he had been there, even before Jolene had found me, and seen me in my worst state.  I felt my cheeks burn as I thought of what a pathetic mess he must think I am. “You look okay now, you even look like your glowing.” He smiled his crooked smile at me.

“Yeah, it took a little bit,” I felt another rush of heat in my cheeks as tried to clear the tightening in my throat, “but I’m working again and doing what I need to do.” It was my turn to look away; I didn’t want David to see how difficult it actually had been. I knew he had seen me, rolled up in a ball, trying to combat the void that was overwhelming from inside, but he did not know what it took to get me to regain my life. David could not know this, because David would tell him, and he did not deserve to know the hold he still had on my heart. I looked back at David whose aqua eyes were staring directly at me, as if he was reading the very words in my head.

“He loved you Charlie.”

“Loved?” The past tense hit me like a giant brick

“I meant he loves you Charlie.” David backtracked and shifted uncomfortably again as I felt anger boil up inside me. Up until this point my mind raced with thoughts of him that inspired only sadness, but David’s choice of words inspired a different truth in my mind, and suddenly the selfishness of his actions hit me and my eyes began to tear with a flood of white hot rage.

“LOVES?! Did he love me when he left, without a word, without a warning, without as much as a fucking goodbye? Did he love me when he ignored my calls, when he changed his number? Is HIS love not enough for him to try to make it work? Is HIS love not enough to make him think that maybe I deserved a chance, or at least a fucking explanation?” I was drawing attention but David’s eyes never looked away from mine. “Does he love me as he sits somewhere knowing that I’m sitting here broken by his hands?”  I crumpled in my seat and began sobbing into my hands. I was sure the entire cafeteria was staring at me but at that moment I didn’t care. All the sadness had morphed into hostility that was unleashed on the wrong person, and still I did not feel any less burdened.