After hanging up, I finished the rest of my coffee before pouring a second cup. When the silence of the house became too much, I put on my shoes and coat and went to sit on the back porch. With it being winter, there wasn’t much noise outside either, but it was better than being cooped up inside.
There weren’t just memories of my grandpa everywhere but of Hunter too. He’d practically lived at my house junior and senior year of school. I saw signs of him everywhere I looked.
I wanted to fix things—to fix us. But I didn’t know how.
Like an idiot, I’d hoped I could return to my hometown and pick up as if I’d never left. That me and Hunter would meet back up, have a huge sappy reunion, and then talk about old times. After seven years, that was impossible. Too much had changed between the two of us.
And he was stubborn.
Even in the beginning of our relationship, he’d often tried pushing me away. Mostly out of fear of what other people would think.
Once, we’d been at my house; around the time we’d first started fooling around. We’d both been stressed over whether we were going to tell people about us, or whether we were going to ignore our feelings and stop.
We were going over homework when I’d kissed his bare shoulder.
“Stop, Cor. We can’t do this anymore.”
“Why not?” I asked, grabbing his chin and tilting his face back to me.
“It’s wrong,” he said with indifference.
With my thumb, I stroked his cheek. “If it’s wrong, then why aren’t you pulling away from me? Why does it feel like the rightest thing in the world?”
Hunter’s eyes watered. “Because we belong together.”
My heart leapt from my chest, and I pressed my head to his. “Yeah, we do.”
“But what will people say—”
“It doesn’t matter what they think,” I said, cutting him off. “But if you want to keep it secret for a while, we can. You just gotta tell me, Hunt.”
“I love you,” he said, leaning into me. “I’m just not ready for other people to know that yet.”
The memory hurt. It was also a bit ironic that I’d been so ready to come out back then, but there I was now, still hiding my true self and letting people believe I was banging a supermodel just so they wouldn’t become suspicious. Losing Hunter had changed me. Perhaps it was because going through it alone was too nerve-wracking.
At least when we were a couple, it was something we would’ve faced together.
Before I could talk myself out of it, I called him. It rang a few times before going to voicemail. I called him again and had the same result.
“Hey, Hunter,” I said after the beep. “We need to talk. Call me when you can.”
It was Wednesday and he was in school. So maybe he wasn’t intentionally ignoring me.
We needed to find time to talk, though, and soon. I doubted we’d ever get back together, but we could at least be friends again.
Sick of the cold, I went back inside and decided to kill some time by watching TV. That got old quick. No amount of crime dramas could hold my attention with the mood I was in. What the fuck was I supposed to do? Sit around and twiddle my thumbs as I waited for shit to happen?
There were things I should be doing.
Ineededto sort through Grandpa’s things and figure out what I wanted to keep and what could be given away or donated, but I wasn’t ready to face that yet.
My agent emailed me about doing an ad for shoes. I needed to respond to her.
William had called me like a million times since I’d been there, and I kept rejecting his calls. I’d have to deal with him sometime. The way we ended things had been abrupt and we needed to talk about it now that we’d had time to calm down. I had no desire to get back with him, but I hated ending things on bad terms.
Hunter was to blame for that. The way he’d dumped me had fucked me up, and ever since then, I had issues with unresolved conflicts.
“Fuck it. I’m not dealing with any of it right now,” I told myself as I lay on the couch.
