AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“And what are you doing?” she asks.
I give it a few seconds. “Horseback riding.”
She starts laughing so I laugh.
“You didn’t come in?” she asks in a quiet voice.
“No, I didn’t.”
“Any reason?” she fishes.
“Yep.”
“Any that you’re willing to disclose?”
I sigh, shake my head at myself. “I’m tired.”
“I’m tired too,” she tells me, but I reckon she means the other kind of tired. And it hangs there, what we’re really saying, both of us begging the other to wave that fucking white flag. But then, nothing. We just fall to silent. Our phones pressed against our ears, waiting for the other to talk. But neither of us do so it sits there between us. Loud and telling. Scared and hurt. The juxtaposition of everything about us. Comfortable and terrified. Everything’s old and all of it’s new. Before we used to smother our silences with our bodies. Now we use them to speak all these fucking words we’ll never say.
“Want me to hang up?” I ask her eventually.
“No,” she answers quickly.
“Okay.” I nod.
“Okay.”
I mash my lips together, try to think of something to say.
“Do you still hate jelly, then?” I ask and she starts laughing.
“Yes! It’s the most ridiculous food in the world. Is it a liquid? Is it a solid?”
I shake my head at her. “It’s very clearly a solid.”
“No, it’s not!” she protests. “It melts as soon as it’s in your mouth!”
“That doesn’t matter, just because something changes states doesn’t mean it wasn’t the thing it was in the first place!”
“Yes it does!” she whines.
“No,” I scoff. “It doesn’t, Parks. What the fuck were you doing during your Physics classes?”
Pause.
“You.”
Silence.
I swallow heavy. “…You said those were frees.”
She breathes out a laugh that bleeds into everything between us.
“Do you remember that time we—” I start to say but she cuts in.
“—Don’t,” she says urgently.
“Don’t what?” I ask, kicking the skirting board by her front door.
