“Dude, I’m so sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
In all our years of friendship, I’ve never heard him sound so dejected. I expected my anger to come back in full force when I saw him again, but instead it completely evaporates at the look of shame on his face.
It hits me how much I miss my friend, and I realize I don’t even need the apology anymore.
“Hey, man, we all fuck up. Remember when I hit that baseball straight through your living room window and knocked over your grandma’s ashes?”
He lets out a low chuckle. “And then my mom made us go to the church to confess our sins even though you aren’t Catholic, and our priest told her it doesn’t count if she forced us to be there.”
All at once, everything feels normal again. It was a lot easier to be mad at David than at myself, but every ounce of animosity fades as we spend the next few hours catching up.
“So,” he looks up at me, looking nervous again. “Have you talked to her?”
“Nope,” I say with a heavy sigh. “I think Jack has, but he’s not talking to me right now either.”
His eyes widen. “Dude, why not?”
“He told me he wouldn’t hang out with me unless I either made up with you or talked about my feelings,” I say with a shrug. “Both options made me want to shove chopsticks through my eyes, so I’ve just been moping in my room.”
“I’m glad you came over, Griffin,” he says in an uncharacteristically serious tone. “This whole thing has been such a shitshow, I’ve felt like ass for weeks.”
“Yeah, me too,” I say, suddenly feeling exhausted by the weight of the whole ordeal. “I’m sorry I lost my shit on you.”
“I’m sorry I messed things up for you with Ellie.”
Understatement of the century, but there’s no use in pointing that out.
Not knowing how to respond, I just nod my head in acknowledgement.
“Should we go to my house?” I offer up. “You’ll have to call Jack though, he won’t believe me if I’m the one who tells him we made up.”
Breaking into a grin, he finally looks himself again.
“Let’s go,” he says, throwing the covers off the bed. “I’ll tell him we’re getting the band back together.”
Jumping up with excitement, he knocks everything off his bedstand again.
We bolt down the stairs, laughing loudly and shouting our goodbyes to his mom as we hurdle out the front door.
Smiling to myself, I think,Maybe this summer is still salvageable.
But it disappears almost as fast as it came, because making up with Eleanor is going to be a hell of a lot harder than this was.
Chapter 14
Ellie
August, Age 15
The back half of summer has been infinitely happier than the front. Most of my time is spent with either Jack or Abby, and the time I had been reserving for rotting my room is now spent gardening with my grandmother, or at the farmer’s market with Mom and Dad.
The suffocating loneliness I felt for weeks eases more and more every day. Sometimes I’ll go a whole day without thinking about the reason I’m lonely in the first place.
It never goes away completely, though.
Once Jack and I finally made up, we started hanging out during the day, and I continued spending my nights wandering around alone with my thoughts, trying not to think about who he’s with when he’s not with me.
When he found out about my little nightly routine, he wigged out at a nuclear level. Despite my protests that this is Larkspur, not Gotham City, he insisted on switching the schedule so that we hung out at night instead.
