8 Weeks (Time for Love 1)

When I turned it on, there were numerous missed calls and text messages from Cal, Gaby, and Sasha. I ignored Cal’s and went right to Gaby’s. She started off worried, then pissed, and her final message simply said, Call Me Now.

I called her.

“Hello,” Gaby said sleepily.

“Hey,” I responded. “Did I wake you?”

“Shelly? You at your dad’s?” she asked, a little more alert.

“Yeah.”

“I’m coming over,” Gaby said. Then she hung up.

“Hello?” I asked, but she was already gone.

I shouldn’t have been surprised though, the three of us had always been like that. We could count on each other no matter what.

Gaby and I had been friends since elementary school. In fact, I couldn’t remember a time in my life without her in it.

Sasha had moved into town our freshman year in high school. She’d been gorgeous, fashionable, and scared the shit out of everyone, so the majority of the school had shunned her almost immediately. Not ones to conform to the masses, Gaby and I had asked Sasha to sit with us during lunch … We’d been inseparable ever since.

I was sitting on the couch, looking out the window, so I saw Gaby’s VW Bug pull up in front of the house and got up to open the door for her.

She jogged up the path, into the house, and put her hands on my shoulders, looking me over everywhere.

“What the fuck is going on?” she asked finally.

I pulled her inside and shut the door, leaning against it as I answered her. When I finished telling her about Cal, her mouth was hanging wide open and she was shaking her head back and forth.

“No … No, way. Not Cal, he loves you too much.”

“Apparently not,” I said with a bitter laugh. “He was drunk and doesn’t remember, but it happened.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m doing it, Gaby. I left him.”

“But, he didn’t do it on purpose …” she began, then stopped when I shot her a glare.

“Don’t you dare defend him.”

“I’m not defending him, Shelly, but it’s Cal. It’s the two of you. You love each other and there’s no way that he would have consciously went out and slept with another woman. You have to know that.”

“I may know that, Gaby, but I also know that I can’t get the image of him with another woman out of my head. I can’t stop thinking that he had sex with someone other than me,” I explained as I paced the living room. “We were both each other’s first and only lovers. That’s not the case anymore, and I can’t get it out of my head.”

“Maybe with a little time you will,” Gaby said softly.

“Please, stop. I know that you love both of us, Gaby, but I need you to be on my side on this,” I pleaded.

“I’m always on your side, Shelly,” Gaby promised. “No matter what.”

Chapter 7 – Cal

“I’m going to do whatever it takes to get her back, man,” I was explaining to TJ as I finished up with an oil change on a Charger.

“Dude, I really don’t get what she’s getting all freaked out about … I mean, I get it … but, it’s not like you’re having an affair or something. It was an honest mistake,” TJ was saying as he organized his tools. He was anal about his toolboxes.

I stopped and gave him a look, “Are you being serious, TJ? It is a big deal. I fucked up majorly.”