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Except something had.
He had.
And I was pretty sure I’d hurt him right back.
I shoved my earbuds in and listened to my audiobook as I wandered the halls of the museum. Every beautiful, meticulously curated exhibit made my attempts at a diorama seem more pathetic, more laughable.
A little before four I made my way to the entrance, because I was supposed to FaceTime with Sofia at four. Only she didn’t call.
I texted, Hey, you ready? <3
At four fifteen she texted, So sorry can we do 5 instead? <3 <3 <3
Resentment flooded me, and I turned on my heel and strode back into the depths of the museum without responding.
Yeah, sure, Felix has no life and nothing to do, so he can always be flexible enough to accommodate everyone else’s schedules. He’ll just contort himself into a pretzel to fit himself around anything else in people’s lives, no problem! Everything else in their lives if I wanted any time with them.
They never chose me over anything else, and they never thought of changing other things to accommodate me.
Whatever. Screw everyone.
I turned the volume up on my audiobook and stomped off in search of exhibits I didn’t walk through often. I was in the Hall of Human Origins when Sofia’s FaceTime came through at five. I didn’t answer. A couple minutes later she called again, and still I didn’t answer. A few minutes later she sent a text: Are you working late? Then another: Are you okay? Are you mad at me for changing times??? I’m sorryyyy! <3
A tiny, ugly thing inside me was happy that she was concerned. Let her worry just one time for all the hundreds of times over the years, and especially lately, that she’d left me hanging, stayed at Coco’s without telling me, and generally seemed to forget that I existed when it was convenient to do so.
Was there something about me that made me so easy to forget? To push aside? To put last? Was it just selfish and immature to want the people that I put first to put me first too?
I wandered into the Hall of Meteorites and imagined what it would be like to be made of space stuff and then end up hurtling into the Earth’s atmosphere and landing in some field in Kansas. Poor, out-of-place meteorite.
Another text came through from Sofia: Feliiiiixxxx are u ok???
I put my phone on do not disturb and shoved it back in my pocket.
In the Hall of North American Forests, I sank down on a bench in awe before a slice of a 1,400-year-old giant sequoia that stood over three hundred feet tall before lumberjacks felled it in 1891. Tears sprang to my eyes at the idea that someone had cut down something so amazingly beautiful that had stood for so long.
That was where the security guard found me. I startled violently at the sudden movement and pulled my earbuds out, hand to my chest.
“Closing time,” she said. I must not have heard the announcement over my audiobook. “You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here,” she quipped, and winked at me.
The idea of going home to my apartment, with no Sofia, no Dane, and nothing to look forward to but another day of slinging bagels, fell around me like a shroud.
To my utter shock and mortification, I began to cry.
The security guard was big and severe-looking, about fifty, with short salt-and-pepper hair and sharp dark brown eyes, but when I started to cry, her face softened and she sat next to me on the bench.
“I can’t even keep a cactus alive,” she said, “but trees this big grow for thousands of years.”
“Yeah, until some lumberjack chops them down,” I sniffled.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, still looking at the tree instead of me. “Love trouble?”
I snorted. “How’d you know?”
She shrugged. “I’m a dedicated observer of the human condition, I suppose. Besides, you’re not the first person I’ve found sulking on a bench alone, and it’s always trouble in love.”
“It is? Why?”
She looked at me, brown eyes flashing.
“Probably because it’s the most important thing. So when love ain’t right, nothing’s right.”
I gaped at her for a moment, then reached out to poke her shoulder with my finger. She tensed and leaned back before I could touch her.
“What was that?”
“Just wanted to make sure you were corporeal. I thought you might be an elaborate hallucination of a wise fairy godmother and I was really just talking to myself.”
“I assure you, I am real. My name’s Sue.”
“Sorry, Sue. I’m Felix.”
“Okay, kiddo, come with me.”
Sofia would think it was pretty hilarious to hear that I got escorted from the museum after hours by a security guard. Then I remembered I was mad at Sofia and sighed.
“I know the way out. I’ll leave, I swear.”
“No, no. Come walk around with me for a bit. You like the museum, I assume? Unless you were just looking for a real dramatic backdrop to your heartache.”
