Page 22 of The Intimacy of Finding You

The moment I threw my car into park, I grabbed my wallet from the passenger-side seat and went to reach for the keys to the back door. Which…I didn’t have. I groaned, banging my head against the back of the headrest. They were still on the coffee table at home. Crew was absolutely going to murder me now.

Of course, that meant I was banished to the front door, since the room we used for meetings was closer to the front than the back. Less of a walk for someone to come get me.

After racing to the front door, I went to fish my phone out of my pocket when I heard something behind me. I turned my head, realizing it was just someone passing by. Once they’d walked away, though, I saw something. Something familiar.

Just across the street were two buildings. In between those buildings was an alleyway where they kept the dumpsters. I paused, squinting my eyes as I tried to make sure I wasn’t just seeing what I wanted to see. To make sure I wasn’t imagining it because my brain so desperately wanted it to be true.

There, sitting on the ground beside the dumpster, was Tobi. He had his backpack in front of him, his arms wrapped around it, and his head leaning against the wall behind him. I didn’t even realize I was walking over there until I was halfway across the crosswalk, my steps getting faster and heavier the closer I got. He was close. So close, yet so out of reach. Was I even allowed to reach for him anymore? The burning question I didn’t fully have an answer to.

I walked until I was right beside him. He didn’t even look up at me. “Tobi.”

He blinked. The only acknowledgment of my presence so far.

“Tobi.” I shuffled in front of him a bit, trying to block his view of…whatever he was looking at.

“Callum.” His voice was hoarse. Why was his voice so hoarse?

Now that I was in front of him—now that I’d found him—I wasn’t sure what to say. Stalling for more time, I leaned against the opposite wall and slid down it, wincing at how cold and wet the ground still was. He wouldn’t look at me, but I looked at him.

There was so much distance, despite being so close I could touch his foot with mine if I moved just one more inch. So close. So far. So much cold and empty space between us.

I looked to the side and noticed an empty glass bottle. It looked similar to some of the whiskey Jack had in his bar. Tobi had already been drinking. “Why’d you leave?”

“Why would I not?”

I narrowed my eyes at him, wishing he’d just fucking look at me. “You agreed to come with me. You agreed to get sober. You didn’t even tell us anything. I just showed back up, and you were gone. Again.”

His shoulders lifted and paused, hanging in the air for a moment too long before they dropped. Was he drunk right now? Or close to it? “The promises of an alcoholic are usually as empty as their bottle.”

“Is that all you are now? An alcoholic, wasting away for the fun of it? You know you could have something, Tobi. You have to know that. If you’d just let me hel⁠—”

“Help me? Is that what you’re about to say?” His head jerked up as he cut me off. Those big, sad, brown eyes were finally staring straight into my soul, and there was something new in them. Anger or hurt in the form of an entire forest on fire. Big blazes, followed by suffocating smoke. “Change me, Callum. That’s what you’re tryin’ to do. You’re tryin’ to make me fit the mold you want me to have. If who I am now ain’t enough, I’ll never be enough. Sober or not. In your life or not.”

I shook my head, closing my hands into fists. I needed something to hold on to, even if it was my own skin. I needed something to keep me grounded, or a new disco would begin, and I wasn’t sure how easy it’d be to get out of. “Oh, I’m sorry for giving a fuck about your health. I’ll never do it again.” I scoffed. “You were always enough, Tobi. More than enough. You have always been everything.”

“Was. I was everything. And then I left. And I’m not the same person. I told you that. I told you I ain’t the same.”

“But your heart is the same.”

He huffed a weak laugh, no more than an exhale through his nose. “No, it isn’t. It isn’t the same. If you can’t accept that, that’s not on me; that’s on you.”

My heart started to beat faster as a numb, tingly feeling spread across my tongue and down my throat. Did he not love me anymore? I hadn’t stopped loving him. Not truly. I’d never been able to get past a first date with anyone because my heart was already too full of Tobi. Tobi. Tobi. It’d always been Tobi. “The least you could’ve done is tell me. Do you know how worried I was? Jack and I spent most of the day searching for you.”

“So what, you could drag me out to your house and make yourself feel better because then you could nurse me back to the person you used to know ten years ago?”

“Make myself feel better? This isn’t about me!” There was a pit in my stomach. A black hole, sucking everything that made me who I was into it. “This is about you. What’s best for you. I don’t want the you from ten years ago. I want the you now, however that looks.”

“You’re wrong.”

“Fucking how?”

A smirk crawled across his lips. “Wow. The fact you can’t even see it. You really haven’t changed a bit.”

My eyebrows pinched together as I leaned forward before realizing that the smoke was still coming, the fires were still blazing, and I was in danger. Danger of burning alive. Of hearing the truth as he saw it. “What does that even mean?”

“You didn’t even notice, Callum. That I’d pulled away. That I’d been havin’ panic attacks in your bathroom every fucking day. That I started packin’ shit from your dresser drawers into one of your duffel bags. You didn’t notice that somethin’ had changed, and then I left. I left, and you say it was out of nowhere. It wasn’t out of nowhere. You just didn’t notice the signs I gave you.”

My throat got tight. Really fucking tight. If I’d tried to speak, I'd have burst into the tears that were desperately trying to come through. My eyes went blurry, Tobi nothing but a vague shape against a red brick background.