"It is easy to love people in memory; the hard thing is to love them when they are there in front of you."
―John Updike, My Father's Tears and Other Stories.
Our mothers often warn us that we will get our hearts broken over and over again until we find that special someone who'll make every other guy pale in comparison and every heartbreak totally worth it― I called bullshit on that theory from the very beginning and with good reason too.
It wasn't easy for someone as cynical as me when it came to dealing with matters of the heart. The problem wasn't that I didn't believe in the concept but it just really perplexed me how easy it was to fall in love with someone you had no business being in love with in the first place.
A loud sigh cut into my reverie causing me to shoot a wary glance at Jamie who was slumped on the couch with his arms crossed.
"I don't want to talk about it." I turned away and stared at the ceiling.
"But this silence is so defeaning," he complained.
"You are such a child," I grumbled.
Reaching beside me, I grabbed my phone and turned it on. It rang almost instantly, eliciting a groan from me.
"You want me to get that?" Jamie asked.
I vaguely heard him as I scowled at the screen where an unsaved number was calling. Even though it wasn't saved, it wasn't unfamiliar either; years of calling it had imprinted it on my memory. "It's no one," I muttered, tossing the phone aside.
My chest hurt as I heaved a frustrated sigh. Blocking Brian's number had been one of the hardest things that I'd ever done and unblocking it proved to be the stupidest.
"I'm still a really good listener," Jamie said.
I tilted my head to the side to look at him. "Why do you even care?"
"Because you're hurting and as your best friend it's my job to care."
"As my what?"
"Your best friend."
I chuckled at the absurdity of his statement. "Why would you say such a thing? We ceased to be friends the moment that you walked out of my life."
"I didn't have a choice, Tay."
"Oh, really now?" I sat upright and reached under the coffee table. Jamie was watching me curiously as I pulled out a photo album. "Freshman year," I told him. "The best and worst year of my college life."
I slowly turned each page, trailing my fingers across the photographs with a wistful smile until I came to a stop at the one that I was searching for. I slid it out and tossed it to Jamie, watching as his eyes widened in recognition.
"Looking up from the photo, he said, "I can't believe you kept it." He then reached into his wallet and took out something that was folded. He leaned over and gave it to me. "Open it."
I carefully unfolded it and found myself staring at an identical photo to the one I'd just given to him. I turned it over in my hand and sucked in a breath at the sight of a happier version of Hailey, Jamie and I. It was the last photograph that we had taken as a group. We were leaning on the hood of Jamie's car, the student center visible in the background. I was hooking Hailey's arm with a wide smile and Jamie had his arm thrown around me.
I placed the photo face-down on the coffee table and looked at him. "You broke my heart that day."
He nodded. "Believe me, I know. I broke my heart that day too."
"Why do we always end up here?" I asked him, smiling slightly.
"Because we haven't resolved our issues?" he suggested
"I think its too late for that, don't you?"
He shook his head. "I came back for you, Taylor. I never should have left and I sure as hell shouldn't have stayed away for three years, but I'm back now and I intend to make it right if you'll let me."
I shrugged, trying to seem indifferent. I'd cried for weeks on end after that fateful day and I'd only stopped when I'd become so sick that my doctor had no choice but to put me on antidepressants and refer me to a shrink.
My phone rang again. I apprehensively reached for it, smiling in relief when I saw Nathan's name. "Hey, you!" I said happily.
"Hey, yourself," he chuckled. "What are you up to?"
I glanced at Jamie who was watching me curiously. "I have a friend over." He relaxed into his chair and I offered him a smile. I surprised myself by feeling totally at ease with calling him a friend and by the look on his face, I surprised him too.
"Well, I just wanted to hear your voice and now that I've heard it, I can go back to sleep," Nathan murmured.
I laughed and returned to my original position on the couch. "You are something else, Nathaniel Davenport," I told him, smiling into the phone. "I can hardly wait to see you tomorrow."
"That warms my heart, Taylor Evans," he said, eliciting another laugh from me. "Any idea where you'd like to go?"
"Surprise me."
When I hung up the phone Jamie cleared his throat. I was sill smiling when I faced him. "What?"
"My mother neglected to inform me that you've gotten yourself a new boyfriend. I only came over because I thought you were heartbroken," he said feigning anger.
I scowled. "I am heartbroken, you just can't tell right now. And he's not my boyfriend yet."
As the usual silence took root, I stared at my hands which were splayed across my chest. I was pretty sure that my face was contorted in a frown, but I couldn't pinpoint why exactly.
Jamie spoke up before I could read too much into it. "So, Nathaniel, huh?"
My smile returned in full force. "Shut up!"
"I'm still trying to wrap my head around the fact that you were actually in a long-term relationship and now I've got Nathaniel to worry about."
"Okay, first of all, that relationship would not have even begun if you hadn't left. I met Brian the night that you skipped town and coincidentally, I met Nathan the day that you were being all cozy with Natalie the hoe."
He scrunched his nose. "She's not a hoe."
"Uh huh," I chuckled. "Anyway, I ought to thank you for that. So, um, thanks."
Muttering obscenities under his breath, he went into the kitchen.
"There's beer in the fridge," I told him, flexing my toes. "Can you bring me a glass of sparkling water?"
"Get your own water."
"Fine," I said, rising to my feet. "Don't drink my beer."
I hadn't made it far when he handed a glass. I sat back down and smiled at him. "How've you been, O'Connor?"
"For the last few weeks, or..." he trailed off.
Nathan's call had put me in a good mood, so I tucked my legs under me and took a sip of my water before replying. "Or."
"You really want to know?"
I shrugged. "Indulge me."
"First of all, you should know that I didn't want to leave, Tay."
"And I should believe you, because?"
"Just hear me out."
I motioned for him to go on. A small part of me was genuinely curious as to where this conversation would lead.
"I tried calling but you never took my calls."
"Two months after the fact. By then I had nothing to say to you. The damage was already done and you didn't even give me a reason that had made any sense."
"I know," Jamie said sadly. "Believe me, I know."
I crossed my arms and stared at the floor, debating whether or not I was ready to rip the band-aid off that I'd tightly secured on the past and re-open old wounds.
Ever since I was a child, I'd clung to my anger. Forgiveness wasn't a familiar word in my vocabulary and forgetting was something that I rarely did. I prided myself on my ability to hold a grudge and frowned at the thought of giving Jamie a second chance.
I wrestled with the idea of hearing him out for a minute longer than it deserved, before making my decision. "You wanna get pizza?" I asked him, already on my feet.
He stared at me long and hard before shrugging. "If you're paying, I'm eating."
***
I wasn't surprised at the silence that had taken over as we drove to the closest pizzeria. In fact, the silence was almost comforting. I didn't want to feel obligated to make small talk with Jamie, who ironically, was the last person I thought I'd be having a late night snack with.
"Your feelings are valid, you know."
I studied Jamie's sullen expression as I took a bite of my cheese pizza. I wanted to ask him what had qualified him to make a statement like that when he'd disregarded them so carelessly time and time again, but instead I shrugged nonchalantly. "Thanks?"
"I don't know this Brian guy, but I do know Katie, and I know that if she has her way everyone will be treating you like the bad guy for not being happy for her," he continued.
I raised my brow.
"All i'm saying is that you have every right to be upset."
"I don't need you to tell me that, O'Connor," I said, wiping my greasy hands on a napkin.
"Still angry, I see," Jamie said with a wry smile. "How many times do I have to say sorry?"
I sighed and looked out the window. "I'm really sick of hearing that stupid word."
Everyone's sorry when it's convenient for them. Brian's sorry that he broke my heart, Katie's sorry that she broke our trust and Jamie, well, Jamie's sorry that he ruined our friendship. But it was too late for apologies and I was not in a very forgiving mood.
I'm not entirely angry with Brian for ending our relationship. Sure, he'd broken my heart when he left and although I was devastated, that pain was nothing compared to the one I'd felt when Katie had so happily announced their engagement.
And then there's Jamie. He'd left with no warning and no clear reason why. I suppose it's selfish of me to be angry just because I felt like he'd abandoned me, but I had my flaws and being selfish was definitely one of them.
"Everyone says that they're sorry, but they aren't. Not really." I fixed my stare on Jamie as I said that. "Because even though my heart is in pieces, if given the opportunity, regardless of how sorry you all are, you'd still make the same choices. So, what good is saying sorry? How does that help me in any way?"
"That's not true," Jamie defended.
"No? So, you're telling me that if you could do it all over, you'd stay?"
He dragged his hand down his face. "I don't know. Maybe not."
I snorted.
"But that's only because me staying would have destroyed our friendship anyway. I'd like to think that I've got a better shot at fixing us now than I would've if I'd stayed."
I massaged my temples. "You're not making any sense, and to be honest, you're starting to piss me off."
"I fell for you," he murmured.
"What?"
He stared at his hands. "I loved you, Tay. And not in the way that you loved me. I really loved you― Loved you in a way I had no right to."
"Wow." I sipped my water and wondered what kind of a fool Jamie took me for. If he had been in love with me, I would have known. He was never good at keeping his feelings hidden.
Jamie was one of the few guys that I knew who wore his feelings on his sleeves. He was the definition of an open book. Back in high school, whenever he thought he'd fallen in love, pretty much the entire entire student body had known about it.
In our freshman year, he'd fallen headfirst in love with Jessica Redder and although it had been a brief relationship just like all the others that had followed, everyone had known how he'd felt from the moment he'd laid eyes on her because he'd showered her with flowers and chocolate and all the other romantic stuff that made me nauseous.
Anyway, the point is, Jamie never had to say how he felt about someone, his actions proved it. And the fact that I was his best friend had meant that I'd be the first one to know, whether I wanted to or not. It was more often than not the latter, as Jamie had a bad habit of falling in love with a new girl every month.
"You don't believe me," he said so quietly that I almost missed it.
"No. I do not." I didn't want to either.
"C'mon, Tay. Don't kid yourself." His voice had taken on a hard edge. "You can't honestly say that you were completely oblivious to my feelings for you."
I sipped my water, all the while wishing it was something with a healthy dose of alcohol instead. "Senior year we'd gotten drunk at Mike Driscoll's party and we made out. You remember that?"
He tensed and I didn't need to wonder why. It wasn't because we'd made out, it was because I'd told him that we'd make a perfect couple right after that. I wasn't entirely wasted when I'd said it and neither was he when he'd told me to knock it off. It wasn't the first time that I'd suggested there be something more between us and he'd rejected the idea. "You were the one who had squashed any talk of anything more between us besides friendship."
"I was a dumb kid, I didn't know how I'd felt about you then and by the time I figured it out, I was scared that I'd lose you if things had changed," he said after a considerable length of time.
I rolled my eyes. "Oh please. Things had changed regardless. I started dating Sam and you and I hung out less, remember? You were uncharacteristically angry for no reason until the day he and I broke up."
"I was angry because I was jealous!"
"You had no right to be jealous and you know it!"
"If I'd told you that my feelings had changed and that I was ready for more, what would you have done?" he asked. "Look me in the eye and tell me you would've said yes."
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Why are we talking about this now? We should've had this conversation three years ago."
"Three years ago you would've decked me―"
"You don't know that," I cut in. "You decided what would happen to our friendship all on your own and in the end, I suffered the most."
"Would you have loved me?"
"I did love you."
The silence that settled over the table was enough to make tears prickle my eyes. Jamie sighed and came over to my side. "Don't cry," he pleaded, wiping away a teardrop with his thumb. "I'm an idiot."
"Yes, you are," I hiccupped, shoving him away. "You ruined our friendship because your heart decided that I was it's flavor of the month. What the hell is wrong with you?"
He shrugged and offered me a small smile. "I don't suppose I can apologize for that, can I?"
"You can try," I said, trying to smile through my tears. "But I might have to punch you."
I tensed when he wrapped his arms around me, holding me tight against his chest. "You'll never know how truly sorry I am, Taylor. I'd give you the moon if it meant you'd talk to me."
I relaxed in his embrace. "I never wanted the moon."