“Paul,” I said, taking a deep breath because I didn’t remember him being this persistent in the past. Maybe he was right and he had changed, but he was still annoying. “Look, just give me some room okay? You’ve been following me around and you keep popping up on me which is kind of scary, and it’s suffocating too. I feel like if I really wanted to see you, I could make that happen myself. I don’t appreciate the intrusion.”
For the first time, I saw a little bit of the old man that I used to know in his eyes. His frustration at not getting what he wanted shone through and he appeared visibly annoyed with me.
“I just wanted to be close to you.” He spoke his words through gritted teeth, and his body language was tense. I was getting on his nerves because I wasn’t giving him what he wanted. In the past, he would’ve scared me and I would’ve relented, but now, I didn’t care.
“Well, you’re going about it the wrong way. I told you what I need. Now, I’m tired and I want to get to sleep. I’ll see you when I see you. Goodbye Paul.” I closed the door and locked it instead of waiting for his response. A crazy thought crossed my mind as I checked the handle, pulling the door to make sure it was locked, even though I had just locked it. Imagine opening the door tomorrow morning and finding him curled up on the doorstep like a dog.
I shook the thought off because it was bone-chilling.
He said that he’d changed, but I had no reason to believe him. He was back in my life trying to demonstrate that he was a different man to me, but he was being a little bit too insistent. If it made sense, he was being too eager, too emotionally available. It felt like the love-bombing all over again. I had a feeling that he had some sort of agenda and he wanted something out of me.
Things were different now and he didn’t have the upper hand, I knew I was right to be cautious. He didn’t have a right to barge into my life and demand access to me again. That just wasn’t for him anymore, and he would spend a very long time proving himself before I even got comfortable enough to consider him again.
25
Toby
It’s complicated… what the fuck was that supposed to mean.
If I had to ask that, then maybe she had a good reason for staying away. It was fucking obvious what that meant. I didn’t need her to explain it, because I had seen it.
She walked out of the house and into another man’s arms. No wonder she was in such a hurry, the guy was out there waiting for her. I didn’t know she was seeing anybody else. It was kind of funny because usually, I was the one on the other side of this conversation. Women I was seeing asked me why I was with other people. She wasn’t cheating on me but I had to admit, it did suck that she had managed to move on so fast yet here I was still thinking about her.
Didn’t that technically mean she was cheating on that guy with me?
I stared out the window out at the city. For days I had been thinking about that stupid birthday party. For days. Where was she? What was she doing? Why was she and everything she was doing a hundred percent more interesting than my job right now?
It’s fucking complicated. Why didn’t she just tell me the truth? Instead of being vague and evasive, why didn’t she just tell me there was something else? Did she think that I couldn’t take it? I felt my fists clench.
I could take it. I could’ve taken it if she had told me, but since I knew she was lying, I didn’t like that. We could’ve handled this like adults. It didn’t have to be that serious. We were just two people who used to be involved with each other, and now we were not. No hard feelings. All just water underneath the bridge.
Yeah, how many times did I have to tell myself that before I believed it?
Who was that man? It was too dark to tell. Besides Easton and Missy and the rest of their friends, I didn’t know any of the people in Maggie’s life.
If I really wanted to find out, I could, I thought. It would take no time, just a couple hundred or couple thousand dollars to a private eye and I’d have my answers probably by the end of the day if I wanted them.
What the hell was I thinking? I didn’t want the information if that was what it was going to take to get it.
I heard a knock on my door, and then whoever was on the other side didn’t bother waiting for my reply, they opened it.
“Go away, I’m working,” I said without turning around. I heard his footsteps as he walked into the room.
“I asked earlier whether you wanted to join me for lunch today. You never got back to me.”
“I figured you would probably want to meet with Missy,” I said.
“If I wanted to meet with Missy, I would’ve asked her.” I turned around and faced him.
Easton was my closest friend. I never throughout our history of friendship had felt jealous of him. We had been on such a similar trajectory until just recently, so I had never had a reason to. When everything in his life started happening with Missy, I didn’t think I would ever want the same thing with a woman, but now, he was expecting a baby with his fiancée and I was… I was letting a woman who was supposed to be a one-night stand completely ruin my life.
It wasn’t the type of jealousy that made me resent him, it was the kind that made me want the same thing. It made me wonder whether Maggie could be for me what Missy was to him. It made me think that having a long-term partner, even a wife wouldn’t be that bad. It might be what I wanted in the first place but was too scared to ask for.
“I’m not hungry,” I said.
“I know you aren’t, but you probably haven’t eaten anything since yesterday,” Easton
said. He knew me so well; I shouldn’t have been shocked that he could read me so easily. Nothing had been going right. I couldn’t sleep, so I probably looked like shit. My appetite was completely shot too, I knew I had lost some weight. My pants were fitting different, and I had lost some strength at the gym too.