The question sounds forced, laced with a fake casualness that seems inevitable during any attempts at small talk between us.
“About four years now.”
“Did you come for school?”
I shake my head. “I did a year of graphic design school in Toronto, but I dropped out so I could gig more and started doing freelance design work. Montreal’s way cheaper, and I was playing a bunch here already, so I moved.”
“Plus you always liked it better.”
“Yeah.”
I hate that he knows it. I hate that he doesn’t seem to have forgotten a single thing about me. I hate that handing back all the secrets I gave him wasn’t part of the deal when he cut me out of his life.
Sitting here beside him is like seeing him through a strobe flight: a flash, and he’s the guy who made me feel like nothing after I trusted him with everything. Another flash, and he’s the guy who lit my life up like nothing else before or since. Another flash, and I want that again. Another flash, and I want this all to stop.
“Why did you—”
I almost have to bite my tongue to stop myself from saying it. I don’t even need to ask; he already gave me the answer, and the worst fucking part is that it made sense.
He was eighteen, after all, heading off to a new city, a new school, a new life filled with new people—and new girls who weren’t sixteen year-olds with fucked up home lives they couldn’t escape. I always knew we were a ticking time bomb, that just like every other inter-grade high school drama, the countdown was on from the moment we met.
He was always going to leave. I just didn’t think he was going to leave like that—with a letter spelling out all my worst fears in black and white. He couldn’t even say he never wanted to see me again to my face.
“Paige.”
It still sounds so good to hear him say my name—sweet and familiar. I could close my eyes and pretend none if it ever happened.
But it did. It all happened a long time ago, and now you feel nothing because none of it matters anymore.
I repeat the thought in my head, holding onto it like a mantra.
You feel nothing.
You feel nothing.
You feel nothing.
“Paige.” He says it again and sets his drink back down on the bar. “I know things are...complicated. I know we’re not who we were, and maybe you’re right that we have nothing left to say to each other, but I just...I’m just so fucking sick of asking myself ‘what if.’”
The déjà vu is almost too much to take. This is exactly what sixteen year-old Paige stayed up night after night imagining him saying. I’d cry and picture him coming back to tell me exactly this.
He was the last man to ever make me cry.
You feel nothing.
He takes a deep breath when I don’t say anything and then goes on. “I’ve been thinking about it. I’ve been thinking about everything. What if we...made a deal?”
I raise an eyebrow. “A deal?”
“A...challenge, if you will, should you choose to accept it.”
I take a sip of my drink and stare at him as I try to keep my hands from shaking.
“Hang out with me a few more times. If you still think it’s better we say goodbye forever, I’ll respect that, and we can both walk away with certainty. I just don’t want to do that yet.”
You feel nothing.
You are numb.
