I about rolled my eyes out of my head at his exasperation with me, but something about the way he was (very loudly) protective of me had me so choked up that I pretended to give him the silent treatment so he wouldn’t hear the emotion in my voice.
If my parents have noticed a difference in my demeanor, they haven’t said anything. To their knowledge I’ve stayed friends with Jack this whole time, so they’re probably chalking it up to teenage mood swings.
July flew by, but once we hit August 1st, dread started creeping in. The start of the school year feels a lot closer on this side of the calendar, and I’m not ready to face Griffin again.
I’ve almost stopped being angry with David entirely–mostly because I realized that he’s just a huge dumbass, not a malicious mastermind.
Maybe when I write my“What I Did This Summer”essay, I can focus on my realization that it’s a lot easier to get over anger than heartbreak.
But I’ll probably just talk about how I broke my personal record for number of pickle juice sno-cones consumed in one summer (112).
***
In what feels like the blink of an eye, I’m sitting across from Abby at the diner on the last Friday night of summer. School starts on Monday, and I couldn’t be less ready if I tried.
Nothing will ever be as bad as it was in June, but I’ve felt myself getting more and more introspective this week. I had hoped that a final summer milkshake would put some pep back in my step, but all it’s doing is making my stomach churn.
“So,” Abby says suddenly, folding her arms on the table. “Are you going to tell me what happened?”
Bewildered, I ask her what on earth she’s talking about.
“If I had a dollar for every time I’ve said‘Don’t play dumb with me, Ellie Turner’in this exact diner booth, my dad could cancel my college fund.”
Her talents are wasted on journalism, she needs to pursue the stage.
“I mean it Ellie,” she continues, unphased by my scoff. “I didn’t push you on it because you straight up looked like a fragile baby bird for weeks, but eventually you need to tell me what happened.”
Hurt flickers across her face briefly, and I’m sick with guilt about keeping her at arms length. We’ve always told each other everything, I didn’t even consider that keeping this from her would hurt her feelings.
I shift uncomfortably in my side of the booth, sitting up straight and rolling my shoulders back as I brace myself to relive the nightmare.
She focuses intently on me as I share everything, from the first time Griffin and I hung out just the two of us, all the way through my dramatic declaration that I will never forgive him.
She doesn’t interrupt me once as I pour out every stream of consciousness I’ve had since that day, but the look on her face when I finish is so alarming that even the waitress changes her mind and scurries away when she approaches the table to ask if we need anything.
“I can’t believe you let me be nice to Jack all summer,” she says through gritted teeth. “I could have focused my energy on ruining their lives.”
“Abby, it’s okay,” I say in the same tone you might use to try and calm down a rabid dog. “Me and Jack have talked through it, and he apologized. We’re okay now.”
“Okay well he hasn’t apologized tome,” she huffs.
I burst out laughing.
“What on earth does he need to apologize to you for?”
Her sharp look silences my laughter immediately.
“Ellie, you might not have let me piece you back together, but I know when you’re hurting,” she says with a devastated look. “And when you hurt, I hurt.”
She’s right–it’s always been that way. My whole life I’ve been called a sensitive soul, but Abby has always intellectualized her emotions. She only loses sight of logic when something has upset me, and when she does she takes on the entire weight of my sadness. And holds on to it for a lot longer than I do.
“I can talk to him,” I offer reassuringly.
“No,” she barks out fiercely. “I would like to have that conversation myself, thank you very much.”
Note to self–warn Jack about a potentially lethal threat coming his way.
I can almost see the wheels in her head spinning as I brace myself for the next explosion.
