“That’s what I was planning on.” I can feel myself fuming just like I did back then. Anger was my only defence against ending up a completely crushed excuse for a human being. “But no, he showed up at my house a week later and asked if I got the letter.”
Zach actually gasps. “No way.”
“Yes. Yes way. I told him I did, and he asked what I thought.”
“He did not do that!”
I wish it wasn’t true, but it does feel good to have someone else be as outraged as I was.
“Unfortunately, he did. I told him he was right, that we were just stupid kids, and I wished him a good time in Montreal and told him to meet a nice girl there.”
“Savage!” Zach holds up a hand for a high five and then realizes that would require me reaching around my sling. “Uh, never mind. I’m high-fiving you in spirit. So, that’s the guy who’s back in your life now?”
“Yeah, and I...I don’t know what to do.”
I hate admitting it. It’s like pointing out a wound and saying, ‘Hit me here.’ Still, getting it all out like that has left me lighter, like I can keep moving on my path even if I don’t know where it goes.
“Wait!” Zach points a finger at me. “Is this the guy from that time we all got noodles?”
I feel my cheeks heating up. “Uh...”
“DeeDee said she thought you guys had a thing!” he crows. “I wasn’t sure, but it was pretty surprising to see you, you know, talking to someone.”
He has a point. Talking is not really my style.
“So, has he said anything about what happened?” Zach asks. “Has he apologized? Was there some kind of mistake?”
“We...We haven’t really talked about it. At first I wasn’t interested in bringing it up. At first I wasn’t even interested in being around him at all. I don’t need that in my life, you know? But then we bumped into each other again, and it was like, okay, I’m clearly still pissed about this, so maybe if we spend some time together and I see it’s not worth being pissed about someone I don’t even know anymore, I’ll be able to get on with my life. So we agreed to hang out a couple times and catch up.”
“But then you still had that connection, right?”
It’s the cheesiest fucking thing to admit, but I can’t say no. Zach seems to take my silence in the affirmative.
“And then you got in the accident? How did that work into all of this?”
I fill him in on the rest of the story, namely the fact that Youssef has been the one taking care of me.
“He told me he wants to ‘move forward.’” I do air quotes with one hand. “I want that too, whatever the hell it means. I feel stuck, but how do I move forward if there’s, like, this gaping hole in the past we can’t even talk about?”
Zach watches me with his lips pursed for a moment.
“You can’t. You guys have got to talk about this. He’s being really unfair not bringing it up himself, but it looks like it’s going to have to be you who does it.”
I shake my head. “I don’t want to be the one to cave.”
Zach makes a sound somewhere between a sigh and a laugh. “It’s not about caving. It’s about moving on with your life, just like you want, and just like he seems to want to. Maybe your lives won’t move forward together, but it’s like you said: you’re stuck.”
It may not be the answer I wanted, but Gandalf is right.
* * *
Youssef invitesme over to his place for our meeting two days later. He suggested a coffee shop first and then added that we could use his condo if I wasn’t feeling up to being out and about.
Public locations aren’t my favourite at the moment—or ever. Everyone stares at you when you’re in a sling, whether you’ve got a baggy hoodie pulled down over your face or not. Plus, if I’m going to suck it up and tell Youssef we need to talk, I’d rather not do it next to the line at Starbucks.
“Which leaves us with option B,” I mutter as I approach the address he gave me.
The slate grey building can’t be more than a few years old. It’s impeccably clean on the outside, for one thing, which is saying something in a city with winters like Montreal, and the design is very ‘modern young professional living in their first condo.’
