“I’m not sure she’ll agree with your assessment,” he said as he blew out a breath. “Matter of fact, I bet she fights you on it and convinces you not to end things.”
“By what rational reasoning? Seriously, Luc, what argument could she possibly make?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. She’ll probably say that she can come back out here next, and you guys can see each other once a month or so. That’s what I would say.”
My temper rising, I practically snarled at him. “Until when? We’ll do that for how long? To what end?”
Everything Lucas said, I’d already thought about. It still led to the same ending. No matter how many times Jules and I saw each other, the fact remained that neither of us was ever going to move. Not when we had these careers that we’d worked so hard for. None of what we were doing made any logical sense.
Lucas shook his head, clearly losing his patience with me. “Just date long-distance forever. I don’t know. You’re making this really difficult.”
“That’s the thing.” I ran my fingers through my hair. “I’m trying to make it really simple. By ending it.”
His mouth twisted into a wry half smile. “I’m telling you she won’t let you. There’s no way that girl will let you walk away that easily. Brace yourself for one hell of a fight, my friend.”
Lucas was right. Jules would absolutely fight me on this, and I wasn’t sure that I’d be strong enough to stand my ground against her. As long as she had a say in things, I was screwed. She’d try to convince me that what we had was worth fighting for, but she wouldn’t be thinking rationally. Jules would base all her decisions on her emotions, on the way she was feeling. I needed to be the voice of reason when it came to us, the logical one.
• • •
The next morning when I went to send her my usual text greeting out of habit, I stopped myself. I needed to put some emotional distance between us, as if the physical miles weren’t enough.
But by the time I made it to the office parking lot, I found myself typing out a good-morning message to her. I couldn’t even go a single day without texting her. I had to try harder.
Tomorrow, I’d try again.
Breaking things off would be the best thing for both of us. It would hurt at first, but it would hurt a hell of a lot more down the road if we kept doing this. Our end was inevitable, so why delay it? One day she’d thank me for making the harder choice when I did instead of stringing her along for months.
The war inside me was coming to a head—shots had been fired and I was going down. There would be no saving me now, no saving us.
I knew what I had to do.
Disappearing Act
Jules
Cal had been a little different the past few days. It wasn’t anything overly noticeable, but I sensed something was off. His tone seemed a little more cautious, and the things he said were the same, as if he was holding back somehow. But instead of asking him about it, I pretended everything was normal.
What was it about Cal’s complex mind that scared me? Was I really that afraid to hear the answers to my questions? And if so, when had I become that kind of woman? Apparently, ever since I’d met Cal. Not only had I opened my heart up to love again more easily than I’d ever thought possible, I was suddenly scared to death to lose it.
That didn’t mean that I liked this newfound side of myself, because I didn’t. It seemed pathetic to avoid asking the tough questions just because I was afraid of the answer. Cal had become such a beacon of light in my life that I hated the idea of it burning out. Somewhere deep inside me, I feared this would end, and I wasn’t ready for it. So I stuck my head in the sand, believing that as long as I denied that anything was wrong, we could keep whatever this was between us going.
Even an e-mail from Robin wanting a play-by-play of Cal’s visit refused to break me. I wrote her back, giving her the CliffsNotes version of our weekend together, which included that I had finally “given it up”—her words, not mine—and avoided all talk of the weirdness between him and me. Robin responded by sending me a video of her doing a happy dance in her bra to a Taylor Swift song.
When I woke up today and there was no text message from him, I worried for only a minute before convincing myself it wasn’t a big deal. I stared at my phone and our last text message exchange, rereading the words from the night before. He was probably just busy, I rationalized as I rolled out of bed to get ready for work. Even though the lack of a morning text was odd, I wasn’t too worried.
• • •
After twenty-four hours without a word from Cal, I became concerned. When texting was your main source of communication, going a full day without it meant that you weren’t talking at all. That would be fine if it was normal for us, but twenty-four hours without talking at all wasn’t our norm. I tried to minimize it, to pretend it wasn’t a big deal, but it nagged at the back of my mind.
And when I woke up the next morning and there was still no text from him, a shiver of concern crept through me.
What if something happened to him, or worse yet, what if he was dead? Would anyone think to tell me? Did anyone even know I existed? Of course his brother knew, and so did his best friend, but would either Cooper or Lucas think to contact me? Cal could be dead on the side of the road, and I’d never know if no one told me.
Shaking my head to rid myself of my morbid thoughts, I pulled up Facebook and saw that Cal had been active within the last four minutes. I sighed, relieved that he was still alive, but confused that he wasn’t talking to me.
What the hell did that mean?
I tried not to read too much into it as I got ready for work, assuming that I’d hear from him eventually. He’d apologize and explain to me why he’d been silent. I wouldn’t be upset with him, of course, because I understood how time consuming our lives could be. And it wasn’t like the world ended if we didn’t talk every single day.