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Another ocean of silence.

“You told me,” he said quietly. “You told me so many times and I don’t know why I just didn’t fucking listen. And I want you to know that I’m getting help for it. Okay? And I’m sorry. You had every right to hit me. I know you and I know you feel bad about it and I don’t even want you to, all right? It was all my fault and I know it.”

I stared at the concrete garage floor between my feet.

“If she ever needs anything, please let me know. I’ll get it for her,” he said. “She doesn’t need to know it’s from me. Anything she needs.”

I scoffed inside.

Now he was the one who wanted to take care of her in secret.

He cleared his throat. “I love you, brother. I just wanted to call to say that.”

I squeezed my eyes shut. “Okay.”

“We’ll hang out soon, yeah? Get you back on those weights.”

“Sure,” I said, knowing I didn’t mean it.

We hung up.

I sat there for a moment. The motion sensor light in the garage turned off and I stayed there in the dark.

This was a breakup.

Not the one between him and Larissa, the one between me and Mike.

My mind hadn’t changed in the time I’d had to think about it. The friendship as we knew it was over. It was worse than a divorce because it was all I ever knew. There was no “before” Mike.

I was in unfamiliar territory. The ground slipping from under me, the foundation of my life, disintegrating. Mom and Dad dead, my friend group scattering. Xavier was gone and Jesse was always with Becca. I hardly ever hung out with him without Mike anyway.

I was done with Donna and Janessa, too, which meant Tony by default and probably the Maddox family as well because they were Mike’s cousins, not mine. They’d still invite me to the parties, but it wouldn’t feel right going if I wasn’t going with Mike. I’d miss Benny and Jane’s wedding. No more Thanksgiving at Mike’s house. No Christmas or summer at the cabin. I grew up there and I wouldn’t see it again, and I didn’t even want to. It was the scene of a crime now.

This was a pivotal point in my life and I knew it in real time.

I was floating. Drifting around on the wind, nothing to anchor me but her.

And she was enough.

If Larissa was the only friend I had left in this world, I could live with that, because the reality was it had already been that way for a while.

Mike stopped being my best friend a long time ago. At some point it shifted and I became his keeper instead.

She was my best friend.

And I was only realizing it now because it never occurred to me that anyone could ever take that spot from Mike. It was a truth almost as old as I was, something I didn’t even question. And maybe I should have. Because I’d been lonely for a very long time.

When I went back inside, Larissa was at the stove plating the eggs. “Who was that?” she asked.

“Mike.”

I saw her tense. “He’s not going to come here or anything, is he?” she asked, handing me a plate.

“No,” I said, taking it.

“Because I know it’s your house and he’s your best friend and—”

“He’s not coming here.”