Everything is not okay and I need her to go to bed right now so I can call people to deal with this shit as soon as humanly possible. She reads it on my face. As her eyes narrow, she thumbs through the pages of the book.
“Why do you stay friends with him? He just doesn’t seem to…care about you.”
She chose her words carefully. “He wasn’t always this big of a dickhead. It happened gradually, a little bit every year, and now that he’s unbearable, too many years have passed. I’ll always care about him, but he will always test every strand of patience I own. Don’t you have friends like that?” Chase is going to be my subject change.
“Not really,” she muses, standing up and setting the book back on the shelf where she found it. “What did he want?” So much for that idea.
I look away. “Just to give me an update on one of our mutual friends.” Not a full lie, but it doesn’t look like she’s buying it either. “No big deal.”
“But he called you for something that wasn’t a big deal. This late at night?” Aara brushes past me and walks slowly into the other rooms in this wing. She peeks in some rooms and walks by others, seemingly with no rhyme or reason.
I follow, keeping a few feet between us. “Chase is a hard person to figure out. What he deems as something important, others don’t.”
“It wasn’t important to you, then?”
I follow her into the movie theatre and watch as she looks around. “Nope. Not at all.”
She gives up on a long sigh, offering to go back to the dining room so I can finish eating. Instead of sitting next to me at the table, she picks a chair across from me.
“I have some emails to sort through tonight.” When she doesn’t challenge me, I release my breath.
“Okay, I’m really tired. I need to text Marissa and head to bed. Goodnight.”
Aara takes her plate and disappears into the kitchen leaving me alone with my thoughts.Chantal is pregnant.When the realization makes me sick, I set my fork down and hold the sides of my head. I have a feeling a lot of horrible songs and a stream of apologies are heading my way.
