Turning Tables ✔

Part 1

I got both of us into the car and turned the heater on before directing my attention to her collar.

"Lyla" the collar said, followed by the name and phone number of her owner. Well, it was only a partial name, I guess, as only the first initial was listed. 'J. Kim' it read.

But the last name struck me.

Kim—I hadn't heard that name in so long. It was the name of my best friend and... Well, I guess that was all she ever was to me. Just a best friend. But somehow even thinking of her now, she felt like so much more than that.

I never imagined that nearly a decade after high school, hearing her last name would still have this kind of effect on me.

I mean, I was an adult now, for crying out loud. We were just kids back then, and I'd come a long way since my senior year. I'd gone to college, gotten a well-paying computer science job, and bought myself a house. I'd had a few long term girlfriends in that time too, though obviously, none of them stuck and I was currently incredibly single.

Still, the point is, I'd grown up. I should have been long over this. But I still missed her. Really, I'd always kind of missed her. She was the closest friend I'd ever had.

If it was up to me, I would have contacted her some time in the last decade, too. I wasn't so strong or so prideful that I specifically tried to keep my distance from her. On the contrary, for years I searched for ways to get a hold of her.

But she didn't make it easy. After graduation, she straight up disappeared. Changed her number, moved away, and instructed her parents not to tell me where she'd gone.

Well, okay, that last part I wasn't sure about. Her parents, who I was always very close to, never told me that she said that. They told me, actually, that they didn't even know where she'd gone to. But I didn't really believe that. I think they just didn't want to cop to the fact that they were holding her secrets for her.

This sounded dramatic, but losing her was probably the hardest thing I'd ever had to experience in my life. Even break ups with some of my long term girlfriends didn't hurt as much as when she walked away, and it wasn't hard to see why.

Because she and I shared a closeness that I'd never found in another person. We were best friends since grade school. We had other friends in our group, sure, but nobody was as close as Jennie and I were. Our parents used to joke that we were each one half of the same mind. I thought nothing could break the bond we shared.

But evidently, something could. And actually, it didn't take as much as I thought it would.

It was kind of my fault; I was willing to fully acknowledge that. But she didn't need to react the way she did. She didn't need to run off like that. We could have worked things out. I would have understood.

She should have known that.

God, I hated that this was dredging up all these old feelings. I was still so angry, so bitter, and so god damn sad over her. But I couldn't react this way to simply reading her last name!

I'd admit, it was a little strange to see it again, especially with a 'J' in front of it. But it obviously wasn't her cat. She'd moved away nearly a decade ago and I knew damn well she would never find her way back to this town.

Even when were young, she talked constantly of wanting to get out of this place. Admittedly, I imagined we'd be doing that together, and not that she'd leave so I could never see her again. But I guess plans change.

Anyway, the point was, it wasn't her cat. It wasn't her name. And I needed to get over this weird emotional outburst I was having and deal with the issue at hand. I had an adorable little kitten here who needed to find her owner.