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“Shelly, I’m fine. You haven’t seen much of Brody lately, and I don’t need any help around here. My other extremities work just fine. Seriously, go bang your boyfriend.”
She bit her bottom lip while she contemplated it. “Are you sure you don’t mind?”
I pointed to her room. “Go pack your bag.”
She quickly disappeared into her room, and I could hear the sound of her toiletries being tossed into her duffle bag. Just because I had to sit home every night didn’t mean she had to.
When she emerged from her room once again, she kissed the top of my head on her way to the door. “Love you, Toad.”
“Love you, Frog.”
My eyelids felt heavy from lack of sleep, but I was too afraid to close my eyes. The hours passed slowly as I tried to keep myself occupied. Two movies, a long shower, and four-hundred pages later, I heard my stomach growling. It was a little after six o’clock, but I ignored it; the fridge was empty with the exception of milk and jelly, and I had no interest in walking anywhere.
The sound of my phone startled me. It was Chase. I had not responded to any of his phone calls or texts since I left him in the parking lot yesterday. I was trying to figure out what to say before he picked me up for therapy in the morning, but nothing had come to me. If I didn’t answer now, though, I’d have to deal with the awkward conversation in person.
“Hello?”
“Hey, open up before I drop something.”
“Open up?”
“Yes. Your door: the big rectangular thing that lets people in and out of the apartment.”
I rolled my eyes as I got up from the chair.
Chase was carefully balancing two fountain drinks on top of two take-out containers as he walked up the stairs when I opened the door. “You know, I could actually hear you rolling your eyes at me on the other side of the phone.”
“What is all this?”
“This is dinner.” He walked past me and set everything down on the kitchen table. Then he began rummaging through the cabinets. “I saw Shelly on my way out of class, and she mentioned you’d be by yourself tonight. I hope you like tacos.”
“She mentioned I’d be by myself, or she told you to check up on me?”
“She mentioned it. I figured you needed dinner.” He stopped to face me. “I know you don’t want my help. If you want me to leave, I can go.”
I don’t know if it was the look on his face, or the hunger speaking. “Well, I can’t let perfectly good tacos go to waste.”
He smiled.
We sat down and let the crunching of tacos fill the silence. I was grateful I decided to shower today. I was also grateful to not be in pajamas with a Muppet on them. Chase sat across from me in a white t-shirt and black basketball shorts. I noted how his sleeves fit snugly around his biceps, and then silently scolded myself for noticing.
“So, how long were you planning on ignoring my calls?”
“I didn’t have a specific timeframe.”
“Well, if you would have answered sooner, you would have heard me tell you that I am sorry for talking to my mom about the apartment. You clearly told me you were not interested, and I kept pushing the issue.”
“Don’t worry about it. You don’t have to be sorry.”
“But I am.”
I shrugged and kept crunching on my taco.
“You’re not into apologies, are you?”
“Nope. Why apologize for something that you meant to say or do? People are only sorry because they don’t want the other person to continue to be upset. It’s like when someone kisses a wound; it doesn’t actually make it feel better – it’s just something people do.”
“Or people are truly sorry for what they did because they didn’t realize how much it would upset someone… and we kiss wounds because that’s how we show we care. You’re very cynical for someone our age, you know.”
