Why does everything good always have to end so abruptly? Why can't good times last as long as bad times do?
I don't understand why Evelyn would tell everyone that her best friend is Frank and not me. What the hell?
I received a text about five minutes later. "Why can't I find you on Facebook?" It was Evelyn.
"I cancelled my account." I typed back.
"What." She wrote.
"I deactivated it." I explained.
"Well, reactivate it." She wrote.
"No." I wrote.
"Why not? What happened?" She asked.
"I don't wanna talk about it." I typed.
"At least show yourself up on Skype, c'mon." She wrote.
"I said I don't feel like it." I typed in anger.
"Please. It will only take a few minutes. I'm asking you." She begged.
"Okay..." I typed as I sighed.
She called as soon as she saw me online. "Here you are," she said.
"Yeah," I said with a cold voice.
"Turn on the webcam," she suddenly said.
"What?" I pretended not to hear what she said.
"Do it. I want to see you," she said.
I was getting pretty anxious at this point, so much so that I was already fixing my hair through the screen's reflection. "Well, you do it first," I said.
"Okay," she said, and it started loading.
She appeared on my screen after a few seconds. The video quality wasn't perfect at all, but it felt so weird because it still seemed like she was in front of me and she looked almost like a stranger.
"Can you see me?" She asked as she adjusted the hair that fell in front of her eyes. Her big blue eyes were the only thing I thought I could have seen with any shitty video quality.
"Yeah," I said and I clicked on the little camera icon to enable mine.
I could see myself in the right corner, and I actually looked there throughout most of the call, to make sure that I never happened to look stupid.
"Hello there," she said chuckling, "why haven't we done this before again?"
"I don't know," I said, hiding my face behind my hand, "we probably never felt the need to see each other."
"Actually I did," she said, "I do. Many times. I want to have you around. But I don't know why I never asked to see you while we were talking."
"Um... I guess it just felt more natural to just hear your voice. Because you could feel as if I were standing right there with you. You could close your eyes and still hear my voice. Using the webcam, instead... it's not the best quality and so it doesn't feel real."
"Feels like a dream," she said.
"Basically," I agreed.
"So you mind telling me why you deleted your Facebook account?" she asked.
"Because I wanted to cut from social media," I lied.
"Bullshit," she said, "why would you want to do that? That's the only way we can talk."
"Jesus," I sighed, "okay. I saw your post. The one about Frank. With all the photos."
"And...?"
"Well, it bothered me." I said.
"What?" she asked, "Why would it bother you?"
"Because it said... it clearly stated that he's your best friend. Your best friend forever." I explained.
"Okay..." she said.
"And I thought that was me," I said, "honestly."
"Well," she said, "don't you think that's a little bit of an overreaction?"
The fact that this was the first thing she said just made me angrier. "Yeah, I know. But still."
"You tend to overreact to a lot of things, you know that?" she said.
"Yeah, dammit, I know." I hissed.
"You're overreacting right now," she said.
"I'm about to overreact out of this call," I said.
She chuckled. "Listen. You are a very important friend to me too. Just because I didn't make you a collage of photos, that doesn't mean you're not my friend. You were there for me when I most needed you. I don't know how I would have gone on without you."
"Okay, see," I said, "I thought I was your best friend, though."
"That's just a label," she explained.
"Well, if it is, then why bother putting it in the first place?" I asked.
"It's just so relative," she struggled.
"Just admit you don't consider me your best friend," I said, "or that you consider Frank a better friend than me. I won't be mad. It wouldn't be the first time someone else gets picked instead of me. I was never known for being first place in life."
"Jesus," she sighed, "how do I say this to you."
"Say what?" I asked, "I told you, I won't be mad."
"Okay, listen," she said, "this will probably sound stupid to you, given the fact that this is actually the first time we're speaking face to face... kind of. A few days back, my friend Angela asked me if I still talked to you... if we were still friends, and then she asked me where you stood in my friend's list. (She wanted to know if I considered you a real friend or a virtual friend). And I struggled a bit. Not because of the whole real vs. virtual shenanigans, but because... I don't know... if she were to ask me about Frank, I would've immediately said that he's a real friend... but when it comes to you... if it were a few months back, I would've said something like 'yeah, of course, we're avsam friends' but now..."
"Now what?" I asked and my heart started racing.
"I don't see you as my best friend," she said, "not like Frank. You understand me? I love you as a person. You're so smart, and nice, you're a nerd, and you always know what to say. I mean, sometimes I want to shake some sense into you, like now, but that just makes me like you more. Now you might ask how I managed to forget Sean so fast... I didn't. But, let's say, if I used to think about him 100% of the time, now I think about him 2%. And soon it'll be zero. I don't feel anything more for him. He made me suffer and, after he broke my heart, he just couldn't care less. And now I couldn't care less about him. Because there are other people who deserve to be in my heart... you were there for me, when I saw you as my absolute best friend... but then... those little things... they made me want you in my heart so bad... those little things made me realize I was starting to feel something different for you. I think... no, I know... I am in love with you. I didn't want to admit it... I mean, my friend... hell no... but now I do. I'm admittedly in love with you, Avsam."
I stopped breathing for I don't know how long. I stopped thinking. I just stared at the screen. At her. I don't really know how long of an awkward silence it was before I broke it by saying something around the lines of "Jesus Fitzgerald Christ".
If that was a dream, I didn't want to wake up.
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Big ass chapter! If you enjoyed, VOTE and COMMENT. Tell me how you feel. I'll see you next week!
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