“We will talk about this later,” my father promised me as he stormed off down the hallway.
He was a man of his word, and later that evening, we spent a good hour discussing my poor decisions. I understood where he was coming from. If I looked at the situation from his point of view, I had made a really bad decision. But I could only look at things from my point of view, and it was done with and over. I actually didn’t care all that much that I got fired.
Luckily, I lived at home with my family and knew I wouldn’t starve to death. Plus, leaving my job really did force me to move on. I might never have actually gone to college and now I really had a reason.
The days and weeks traipsed by and I expected Erik to call at least once to check in with me. But then again, I had told him to take six months to get his recovery going. I thought about picking up the phone to call him but didn’t want to be one of those girls who latched onto a guy after a fun fling.
If all we had was a fling, I was all right with that. It didn’t cheapen the events of those weeks for me, at all. I still thought Erik was great and I still thought that someday we would connect again and reminisce about how we met.
My life went back to normal, although I felt there was a bit of a hole in is as I moved on. I started to work out regularly at the gym – it was a great way to blow off steam and the empowerment I felt was hard not to love. First, I could run for five minutes at a time and then ten. Soon, I was on the treadmill running for up to an hour at a time, with an incline.
I started making plans to try my hand at a half marathon in the summer. Aspen was a great outdoor recreation location during the spring and summer, and a local running group had a pretty popular rac
e that happened in June. With the race on my mind, I put together a training program and stuck with it.
Eating healthy, exercising every day, and working at my parents’ ski resort filled the remained of the winter months and well into spring.
I hadn’t forgotten about Erik. I still thought about him often and even picked up the phone to call him every now and then. But I couldn’t do it. The farther away his days at Paradise Peak got, the more I started to convince myself that I just wanted to be the type of girl a man like him wanted.
Then one evening my parents and I were sitting around the television and turned on the entertainment news shows. They were talking about a new movie studio that was growing quickly, and my ears instantly perked up. Erik was attending a movie premiere to bolster his new studio. They had partnered with a veteran studio and it was all over the news.
I leaned forward and watched their coverage in hopes of seeing Erik somewhere. I just wanted to see if he was doing well. To see how he was handling things once he got home. If I could see him on the television, it would relieve a lot of worry I had running through my head.
“There he is!” my father pointed to the screen.
“Wow, he looks really handsome all dressed up,” my mother added.
I couldn’t take my eyes off of him. Erik was walking the red carpet with a man who I had to assume was his friend Spencer. Both men were dressed in tuxedos with clean-shaven faces and lips pressed widely into a smile. He looked so damn happy I felt like I was going to explode.
Even if nothing ever came of us, I was happy for him. I wanted all the best for him and he really looked like life was going so great. I didn’t need to call and bother him. I didn’t need to know anything else. I felt better and even had a little closure to our situation.
“Have you talked to him lately?” my father asked me.
His question surprised me. He hadn’t been all that happy with me when he heard what I had done. I really didn’t think he liked Erik, but by the way he was watching the television, maybe I had been wrong.
“No, I haven’t talked to him.”
“Why not? Didn’t he give you his number?”
“Yes, Dad.” I laughed. “But it’s not that simple. I’m not just going to call him and be some silly girl. He also has my number, and he never called me.”
“Well, look at him, he’s really busy. You should just call him,” my father urged.
I laughed at how eager he was for me to connect with Erik. I certainly hadn’t expected that.
“It’s been months, Dad. I can’t just call him up now.”
“Why not?” my mother added.
“Because it’s been months. Don’t you think it would be a little weird if I suddenly called him out of the blue now?”
My parents were old – they didn’t understand the rules of dating now and how weird it would be if I called him after months of not calling him.
It would have been different if I had called right away after he left. Even if I had called a month later. But now we were going on six months since he had left Aspen. He hadn’t called me and I hadn’t called him. There was no way I could be the person to break down and call the guy now.
“I still think it would be nice of you to call and congratulate him on his success. You two are friends now, right?” my mother said.
“Sure, we are friends. But I wouldn’t know what to say. I can’t call.”