Dear Heart, I Hate You

She waved away my question. “You know there’s nothing going on with me. All work, all the time. And then random guys who mean nothing the rest of the time.”

“I can’t wait to see the guy who knocks you on your ass and steals your heart.”

She gave me a wry look. “To be honest, you’re not making me want that anytime soon.”

“Pretty sure you won’t have a choice in the matter,” I said with a small smile. Tami truly in love was going to be something to see.

“Trust me. I’m aware.”

Our drinks arrived and we toasted each other before downing them way too quickly.

“I need bread,” I warned, “or it will not be a pretty night.”

Tami snorted. “I need more than bread.” She waved our waiter back over, and we ordered food along with our next round of drinks.

I downed my third lemon drop before reaching for my phone, which I’d placed on top of the table.

“Oh no, you don’t. Give me your cell!” Tami practically yelled before prying the phone from my grasp.

“Why are you taking my phone from me?”

“Because you’re drunk,” she said matter-of-factly, as if that was a perfectly acceptable answer.

“And?”

“And drunk Jules equals drunk texting with Cal. You’ll hate yourself tomorrow if you cave and text him tonight.”

She was right, so damn right. But that didn’t stop the desire from churning within me. I wanted to text him. I missed him so much, I felt it in every part of me, especially my stupid heart.

“How can he just walk away from me and not care?” I asked Tami again, as if she’d have new insight into the same question I’d been asking since he left.

She shrugged, her eyes sad. “I don’t know, Jules. I’m sorry. None of it makes any sense to me.”

“Me either. I just . . .” I stopped and sucked in a deep breath. “I miss him, and I don’t understand how he doesn’t miss me. Was everything he said to me a lie? It has to have been, right? Otherwise, he’d be just as miserable as I am right now.”

“Do you think it was a lie?” she asked before sipping her cocktail.

“Yes.” I shook my head. “No. I don’t know. I don’t want it to have been lies because then that just means I’m a fool on top of everything else.”

“You’re not a fool.”

“But I believed him without question. Every single thing he said to me, I totally bought into and believed because I felt the same way.”

“That doesn’t make you a fool, Jules.”

Tami might have been trying to make me feel better, but it wasn’t helping.

I had believed every word Cal said and texted me over the past two months. My heart would skip when he told me he missed me, that he couldn’t wait to see me again, or that he couldn’t stop thinking about me. I never even thought for a second that those words might be untrue. Until now. Now it was all I thought about, how his words had to be lies.

I didn’t understand what he had to gain by lying to me, but it was the only thing that made any sense. If everything had been a lie, then of course it would be easy for him to walk away and never speak to me again.

“I wish I had the answers for you.” Tami lifted her glass to me before downing the rest of her drink.

“Me too.”

I wish someone did. The not-knowing part was slowly and painfully killing what was left of my heart.

As my brain tried to come up with scenarios that made sense, a new possibility occurred to me. “Maybe he met someone and didn’t want to tell me. If he met someone else, he would probably just move on and not want to tell me about it.”