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“You didn’t hurt Bear and Sam. Dr. Douche did.”
Her mouth quirks up at me calling him that.
“You said we do all the hard stuff together. Remember?”
She nods.
“Look at me.” I tip her chin up, and her blue eyes fall on mine.
“Let’s go home. Harley’s waiting in the truck.”
“Okay,” she whispers.
thirty-three
Callie
Then
“It won’t be sobad. I mean, one bathroom and six girls. You can make a schedule, right?” Goldie asks as she cuts into her waffle, trying to be positive and cheer me up. It turns out that New York City is the city that never sleeps. We can go out for waffles at midnight after catching a show. Goldie took vacation time to drive me down to the city. In just two weeks, she helped me find a room to rent in an apartment that I split with several other girls and a job at the local hospital as a nurse tech. I start my training classes for that on Monday. It’ll be a great job while I’m in school. Things are working out, but this isn’t how I thought college life would go. It’s damn near killing me not having SJ here with me living the life that we planned out together. But now that I’m here in New York City, I’m trying to picture SJ here, too, and I can’t see it. Was he just supporting me all along? What did he really want? How did I not see this? I want to find him, fix things, and go somewhere else. Anything to have him back with me.
It feels like SJ is a ghost now who never really existed. And now that I’m in a new place, I can’t feel him anymore. He’s not here and never will be.
But Goldie has helped me see that I’m not alone.
I shrug. “It’ll be fine. I’ll probably be so busy with school and my job that I won’t be there much anyway.”
“Hey, look at me,” she says.
She tilts her head and smiles at me. “You can do this.”
I nod but look away and blink back a few tears at her kindness.
“I heard from him,” she says softly, cutting another piece of her waffle.
I shake my head. “I don’t want to know.” I’ll just get mad because I haven’t heard from him. He hasn’t bothered to reach out to me.
She sits back and studies me. “Okay.”
I look out the window over the city skyline and think about what it would have been like if he was here eating waffles with us.
“Have you heard from your parents at all?” she asks.
“No.” I shake my head.
“I’ll help you with anything you need. When school starts next month, you’ll do great. And on your school breaks, you can come home and stay with me, or I’ll come back down,” she says happily. “Oh, we’ll have so much fun!”
“Thank you for helping me, Goldie,” I whisper.
“You’re welcome, honey. Now, eat your waffle. I don’t want to worry about you being hungry when I go home.”
“You don’t have to worry about me, Goldie.”
“I’ll always worry about you.”
now
My parents made me feel like I always had to do everything on my own. SJ makes me feel like I can do anything by myself, but he won’t let me. Whenever I try to return to my independent ways, he reminds me that he’s here now. And I kind of like it. Okay, I like it a lot.
