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Hailee:I’m so sorry, Aiden. Our lives are heading in different directions. Maybe we can still be friends, but I think it’s best if we don’t talk for a while.
It had been a while.
Five years, eight weeks, and a handful of change.
Not that I was counting.
Back then, I tried to reach out, yet she all but ghosted me. Over a decade of friendship and one season of love down the drain for no real reason other than her thinking our lives were going in different directions. What a pile of horseshit.
I began typing out a new message even though her name in my phone told me to do differently.
Aiden:I won an Oscar. I’d promised you’d be the first person I’d text about it after my parents. So there you go.
I blocked her before she could reply.
Then I unblocked her to see if she’d replied.
Then I blocked her again because screw her.
Then I unblocked herbecause screw her.
I went back to my bourbon and pity party for one. It was odd to me how I could be in Hollywood’s spotlight, surrounded by people most days, yet still feel so eerily alone.
I’d spent the next few months in that same strange feeling of loneliness. I kept busy because that was the best way to keep her off my mind, but when I returned to my quiet house, too many thoughts would flood my mind.
So more bourbon, more quietness, more thoughts.
I felt as if I was going to go insane. That was when my mother called me and said she saw an interview with me from the week prior. She’d told me she saw it in my eyes—the sadness.
“I’m fine,” I lied.
“You’re not,” she argued. “You’re going to play Superman, Aiden, and this is a huge deal, but still… you’re sad.”
“No one else has mentioned me looking sad.”
“No one else is your mother, so come home for a while. Take a break. Winning the world over isn’t worth losing yourself, so please… come home.”
I disagreed for a while until I realized that she was right. I didn’t know who I was anymore. I felt so far from myself that I saw a stranger when I looked in the mirror. I didn’t even see a glimpse of who I used to be.
So I packed my bags and headed back to Wisconsin.
22
Hailee
Six months ago,Aiden texted me.
He won an Oscar.
My hand shook nonstop as I saw Aiden’s message come through my phone.
Of course, I knew he’d won the Oscar. Aiden was quite the trending subject after his epic win. As I watched it unfold in front of my television screen, I felt my heart bursting with excitement. My heart also burst a bit with sadness, because I saw the slight panic attack he was living on that stage. Over the years, he’d become better at hiding his panic attacks. I’d watched all his videos online, though, and could still spot them. Nobody studied that man more than me—even from a distance.
My poor Aiden…
Not mine, Hailee. Not mine.
Still… I missed him.
