My mother kept calling to apologize and see if I was okay. But she wasn’t to blame and it was exhausting pretending I felt better than I actually did. I found myself dodging some of her calls.
One night Shelby stopped by to check on me. It might have been two weeks later. Maybe three. Time had sort of lost all meaning. She let herself in because she still had her key.
“How are you doing?” she asked.
And I knew why she looked so concerned. Despite her counsel to take care of myself, I had fallen into a deep funk that included not leaving my house and forgetting about personal hygiene. I was also wearing the hoodie that Noah had lent to me and I’d never returned. It had never been washed. “Today I wanted to find out how many Snickers bars I had to eat to stop feeling sad. So far it’s not ten.”
“Sweetie, what can I do?”
Tell me about Noah, I wanted to say but didn’t. Whenever we talked or she visited, I was starved for information about him. But she wouldn’t talk about him. Even when I specifically asked, she would change the subject. I was torn between understanding why she was doing it, wanting to keep out of it because she had her own relationship with Noah, and feeling hurt that she wouldn’t give me every morsel and detail she knew because I was her best friend.
Not that I couldn’t get morsels and details of my own. It was really hard to break up with someone when there were millions of images of him online. When with a click of a button I could hear his voice whenever I wanted. See his beautiful face. Watch him gazing adoringly at Aliana the same way he used to look at me.
I’d been so stupid.
But I was tired of remembering how dumb I was. So instead I answered her question by saying, “I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m doing anymore. Other than the Snickers bars today, I haven’t really been eating or sleeping. And those are my two best events. I was also considering giving myself bangs.”
“That kind of talk stops here,” she told me. “I am not going to let you cut your own hair while you’re sad. Just like I wouldn’t let you go to the grocery store if you were hungry. Mistakes will be made and regrets will be had. Speaking of food, do you want me to make you something to eat?”
I hugged my pillow tighter. “I don’t want you to cook for me.” Noah cooked for me and it just felt like too much. “Why did you let me date him? I feel like part of this is on you.”
“It is all my fault,” she agreed, trying to take the burden from me, only it didn’t help. It just made me feel guiltier, because of course, she’d played no part in my downfall. She’d actively encouraged me to try to prevent it. But wouldn’t it have hurt just as much then as it did now?
“No, you were right. I should have told him. But either way, he would have left. Just like my dad.”
“I feel like that’s a whole other thing that I’m not qualified to get into with you, but maybe that’s another reason you kept your secret. Because you were convinced that no matter what you did, in the end, Noah would leave. And this way you got to justify your belief by causing it.”
Whoa, that was way too deep for somebody who had just eaten ten candy bars. Maybe what she said had merit. I’d have to think about it. When my brain wasn’t so sad.
She went into the kitchen. “You have to eat. Actual food.” She checked my empty fridge. “Okay, I’m ordering delivery. You’re having Chinese.”
“Snickers is actual food. It has peanuts. That’s protein.”
“I’m serious, Juliet. I’m going to tough love you here. You’re going to eat, and tomorrow you’re going to wake up and go clean some dogs and find new clients. Maybe even take up a hobby or something.”
“I was considering alcoholism, but I can’t afford it.”
“Which is why you have to start working again and stop delaying your appointments.” I never should have told her about that. “I understand what you’re going through. It would have killed me if I ever lost Allan.”
I didn’t remind her that she almost had, what with her being willing to break up with him to protect him. I was like her polar opposite, selfishly hanging on to Noah without giving him all the facts. Hiding it from him.
And from myself.
Everything I’d ever asked him to do, he’d done without question. And all he’d ever wanted from me was my honesty, and I couldn’t even give him that.
I was tired of thinking about me and my pathetic lack of a life. “Things are better with Harmony?”
She smiled, her first real one since she’d arrived. “She has bought so many baby clothes, and we don’t even know the sex of the baby yet. She’s very excited to be a grandma. Although she wants us to have the baby call her Gigi, and I’m still deciding how I feel about that.”
It was nice that good things were happening in the world. I tried to say that, but instead I started crying again. It happened a lot recently.
“Sweetie,” she said, hugging me. “I know. I thought for sure you guys were going to make it. You had this relationship like me and Allan—you would have kept him grounded and stopped him from getting a big head, and he would have reminded you to have fun and done romantic things like fly you to Las Vegas just because.”
And the fact that she was willing to say something about him actually stopped my tears. It surprised me; I would have expected her words to make me feel worse, but instead they made me think that I hadn’t made it all up. He had loved me and we were good together.
We’d shared something special, even if we didn’t have it anymore.
“I never told him I loved him,” I confessed.
“I’m not surprised. That wouldn’t have been easy for you to say to anyone. Again, dad issues and kissing phobia, but how could you have said that when you knew deep in your heart you weren’t being totally truthful with him?”
That hit me hard, piercing me like a knife. That’s why I hadn’t been able to tell him. How did she always see me so clearly when I ran around not knowing why I did half the stuff I did?
She sighed and said, “I’m going to tell you this and then we have to stop talking about him, because it’s going to make you sadder, okay?”
I nodded, probably too eagerly.
“He is so miserable without you. He pretends like he’s okay, but I can hear it in his voice and see it in his eyes. He misses you like crazy.”
“Does he ask about me?”
“No.” Her eyes were full of sympathy, and I told myself I wasn’t going to cry again because I was tired of being dehydrated. “But I do tell him some things about you.”
There was a knock at the door, and she went to answer it. Our food had arrived from the restaurant around the corner.
And I knew she’d told me the things she had to make me feel better. Maybe feel not so alone because he was just as sad.
But instead it made me feel worse. I didn’t want him to be suffering, because I knew that I was the cause of that.
She stayed and ate with me, refusing to leave until I’d eaten half a container of beef with broccoli. Turned out I was hungry for real food. Well, takeout food, which was kind of the same thing. I decided I should probably go to the store and get some vegetables and citrus so that I didn’t die of scurvy.