Guy Hater (Fisher Brothers 2)

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Hours turned into days, then a week, and it became clear that Frank had done the unthinkable. He’d ghosted me, disappeared without a trace.

Of course, I knew exactly where to find him, but I couldn’t bring myself to face him if he didn’t want to talk to me. Britney had tried to convince me to show up at the bar and demand an explanation, to put him on the spot and make him uncomfortable, but I couldn’t do it.

Forcing Frank to be uncomfortable meant making myself uncomfortable as well. I cared about him so much that any pain I might inflict upon him would cause the same pain in me.

Why the hell would I want to do that?

And what if the answers I demanded from him weren’t the ones I wanted to hear? What if he said that I was a mistake, or that he had no feelings for me? I wasn’t ready to hear any of that. As weak and pathetic as it sounded, I simply wasn’t ready, even though I knew I should be. My pride was wounded, my ego sulking.

“Stop wallowing,” Britney said one night as we binge-watched a television series everyone had been talking about.

“I’m not wallowing,” I insisted, but it was a lie. “Ah, hell. I am wallowing.”

“I know. It’s annoying. And completely unlike you.” She kicked her feet on top of the coffee table and settled deeper into our couch.

“I don’t know where my anger went. I was so pissed, but it was short lived. Now I’m just so sad. And a little pissed off when I start thinking about it all, but I’ve gotten pretty good at compartmentalizing.”

And I had. I didn’t realize how good I could be at tucking Frank into a corner of my mind and locking him there. I still thought about him every single day, though, and it still hurt that he hadn’t tried to talk to me. But the second the pain started to kick in, I turned it off and went about my business. I convinced myself that I was fine, moving on, and didn’t need Frank Fisher in my life.

Britney shook her head. “You shut it off, all right, but it still affects your emotions. You wouldn’t be wallowing if you were as fine as you acted.”

“I miss him. And it’s stupid, I know. I shouldn’t miss him. I should be plotting his demise and wishing his dick would fall off.”

“Yes, you should be. I hope it falls off in small pieces and takes a really, really long time.” Britney gave me a wicked grin, and I laughed.

“You’re evil.” I tossed one of our small throw pillows at her but she blocked it, knocking it onto the floor.

“Yup.”

“I can’t believe he’s never called. I wouldn’t have thought that he would be like that, you know? He seemed like such a together guy. And mature, a real man. The way he’s acting now, though, is cowardly. And what the heck?” My blood pounded in my ears as my irritation rose. “I am not attracted to cowards.”

When I thought about Frank in that way, disgust multiplied inside me like a virus, poisoning everything in its path. Frank didn’t deserve my thoughts to be only of him as the kind of man I wanted him to be when he was proving to be anything but.

“He is a coward,” Britney said. “And a jerk. It almost feels wrong to describe him that way, but his actions say everything. Or his lack of actions, anyway.”

Something deep inside me that felt a lot like self-respect stirred to life.

“You know what? I deserve an explanation.” I sat up straighter on the couch as a door in the back of my mind flew wide open, allowing new realizations to pour out of it. “I’ve made this so easy on him by going away. He hasn’t had to deal with me, or what he did to me, at all.”

Maybe my emotions did have a switch, after all. It might not have been the on-off kind, but there was definitely now an array of feelings to choose from. One simply replaced the other in the space of a heartbeat.

Britney turned toward me, narrowing her eyes. “Nope. You’ve let him sweep it under the rug like you never happened. Like you didn’t even exist. He’s had absolutely no consequences for his actions.”

I bristled at that comment, but she was right. In all my self-imposed pity, anger, embarrassment, and sadness, I’d left Frank alone, thinking I was doing myself a favor, but I wasn’t. Not having any answers made the situation even harder on me. I’d willingly walked away as my pride hoped he’d chase me, and my heart silently cried out, begging to be healed.

My staying in the background had given him an easy out, and that wasn’t fair to me. I deserved so much more.

Abruptly, I stood up. “All that ends today.”

“Today?” she asked, leaning forward and plucking the pillow from the floor.

“Yeah. Right now.”

I reached for my phone to send Frank a text. It was time to start the conversation I’d been so clearly avoiding.

Silent Treatment