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I watch her breathe, her breasts rising with the intake of air. And I can see her looking at me the same way I’m looking at her. Mystified.
But this is my best friend.Wasmy best friend. And the way that I’m looking at her, the way she’s looking at me, should not be the way that best friends, oroldbest friends, should be looking at each other.
Or maybe it’s just me. Maybe she’s looking at me more annoyed than intrigued and I'm too fucking focused on how it feels to finally see her again to notice.
I back away a few feet to give her some space.
“I was only playing with you, Holli. But it’s been a good eleven years since I’ve seen you. Figured we were due the silence for a minute.” I try to reassure her, but I don’t think I have the same effect on her as I used to.
We’re practically strangers now. We’ve both grown so much since the last time we’ve seen each other and I’m afraid we don’t know each other anymore.
“Jaxon,” she whispers my name. But I don’t sense anything other than…pain?
“Hollis.” I lean up against the sink across from her. The silence between us deepens as I analyze her, and she stares at the floor. Does she not miss me?
But the silence breaks as someone knocks on the door.
“Busy,” I holler and the person on the other side groans but gets the hint.
Hollis shifts in her position. Is that…discomfort?
“What are you doing here?” she asks again, obviously looking for more than I gave her the first time.
“I’m back in town. Got invited to this party. So, here I am.” I don’t know what else to tell her. That’s the only answer I can give and it may come off as short to her, but I’m starting to get the feeling that I’m not as wanted as I had hoped.
She lifts up off the wall, now a look of annoyance painting her facial expression, and she heads toward the door.
“Wait.” I reach for her arm, but she tugs it away faster than I know how to react.
“Jaxon, you can’t just do this.” She waves her hands around. “Thisis not something that we can do. It’s been eleven years…” she whispers that last part, probably hoping I wouldn’t catch the sting in her tone. But I do.
“You know I had to leave,” I answer her. It wasn’t like I suddenly got up left. She knew my plans after graduating high school. So, I don’t understand why she sounds so pained by it.
“I know that, but I-” She can’t even keep eye contact with me. Is that because I made her mad? Have I upset her? Is she shocked?
Whatever it is, despite the fact that we have a lot of catching up to do, it bothers the crap out of me. But before I can conjure up any sort of response, she unlocks the door.
“I have to go, nice seeing you.” Then she leaves.
And I’m kind of confused. I would think that after all this time, she’d be excited to see me again. Maybe a friendly hug at least? I hope she knows I was just fucking with her by saying we’d pick back up where we left off. But not even so much as eye contact.
I wonder what her problem is.
It’s been about an hour since my encounter in the bathroom with Hollis, and she seems to have taken off for the night because I haven’t seen her since.
“What crawled up your ass?” Mason asks as he slides in next to me at the bar.
“Who said anything did?” I deadpan, taking another big gulp from my fourth beer.
“You look like something definitely crawled up your ass and died, dude. Somber and tragic as fuck is what you look like.”
Normally I’d brush off his comment, but because I’m on the road to being a belligerent drunk tonight, I decide to entertain his accusation.
“Well, man. Let’s see,” I finish off the draft and wave for another, then finish my explanation, “The one person I was looking forward to seeing tonight totally blew me off like I was dust in the wind. My mom has already started badgering me about my lack of degree. But she completely skipped over the fact that I basically can afford anything she or I could ever want for practically the rest of our lives. And in tandem with that, she’s been comparing my younger brother's success to my lack thereof and obviously sharing how proud of him she is with the world. Because not more than a minute of his foot through the fucking door and the social media posts were flooding in.” I reach for the fresh beer that the familiar bartender slid to me and chug the damn thing down in three swallows.
"I forgot. You're, like, super rich now," Mason states.
"That would be all you fucking got from that." I let out a sigh of annoyance.
