Best Friend's Ex Box Set

“I know.” She snickered. “I remember very well. Of course, most of the time, that blood was mixed with copious amounts of alcohol, like the time you took your shirt off at that game, and it was literally ten degrees outside.”

“Oh, yeah.” I laughed. “I couldn’t feel my nipples for a week after that. In all honesty, though, this last week has been nothing but work.”

“And taking out innocent librarians during your morning jog.” She laughed.

“Of course, that’s a given,” I teased. “But the new place I’m working at is great. It’s just super time-consuming because they needed a cleanup guy to come in and get all the overflow handled and the schedule back on track. I’ve managed to take a big chunk out of that task, but I still have a long way to go.”

We continued to have light and easy conversation, drinking our beers and staring up at the television screens above the bar during the awkward silent moments. However, as the beer wore down and the crowd started to move inside, our conversation seemed to diminish. We were forcing it, I could tell, and it was almost painful to go through. I realized then that this had been a mistake, one that I felt terrible for making since I had put Elana through the pain of rehashing old memories.

There was way too much painful history between the two of us, and I had come bulldozing in, rushing us right back into the past. Of course, that wasn’t my intention. I had hoped that having a familiar friend here, someone that I knew I cared a lot about, would help me transition back into this life a little easier, but I realized all I was doing was dragging Elana backward. She didn’t need to remember all of these things. She had spent the last five years doing her own exorcism of sorts, one that made it so she could still breathe every day when she woke up.

Even there at the Crescendo, a place that was completely new to me, there was an awkwardness that I couldn’t really dispel. It was something that was unspoken between us. It was like the entire last five years had created a cavern that separated me from Elana, and in between was a sea of memories that neither one of us wanted to go through to get to the other, at least not that night, in that bar on the edge of town. It was sad really, especially since I really enjoyed being around her. I think I knew that the night was over, that it had reached a point where we weren’t going to be able to find that common ground that we were hoping for when we met earlier. Maybe I had started the whole thing on the wrong foot, and I didn’t just mean thinking I could traipse over all the old spots we used to go. Maybe my intentions from the beginning misled me, and if I had really wanted Elana in my life, I should have let her absorb me into her world, not push her back into the past.

I paid the tab for the beers and walked Elana out, no need to say that the night was actually over. It was more than obvious that we both were in a place that we didn’t want to be, whether we liked each other’s company or not. Maybe it was still too soon, or maybe trying to have anything to do with my old life was just impossible.

“Thank you for agreeing to have dinner with me,” I said, glancing to Elana in the passenger seat as we drove back toward her house.

“It’s been really good catching up,” she responded with a forced smile.

It was glaringly obvious we weren’t going to be seeing each other again. Kind of like a really awkward blind date where you both want to be polite, so you withstand the whole thing knowing there is no chemistry and no future. It was kind of painful thinking this would be the last time that we hung out, but I knew that it was necessary. There was nothing there but a void too big for either of us to get across, and I couldn’t sit around waiting for that void to close, and neither could she. No matter how much I wanted this friendship to pick back up and develop, I could see now that it was probably not possible. If it had been in another time or even another place, this could have gone completely differently, but with Lillie’s ghost haunting us at every turn, I couldn’t possibly imagine that we could continu

e to do this to ourselves.

Elana paused and smiled at me, putting her hand on mine for a moment before getting out of the car. As I watched her walking up to her row house, her shiny black hair glimmering in the street lights, I thought about all the missed opportunities. Still, I couldn’t shake Lillie and could almost see her standing on the porch next to Elana, waving goodbye to me.

Chapter 8

Elana

Sundays were both painful and relaxing at the same time. When the clock chimed noon, you could expect that I would be at my mother’s house, drudging through whatever lecture she had for me, and then finally enjoying my time with her. She lived alone. My dad and her divorced years before. I felt like it was necessary for me to spend as much time with her as possible. My mom’s name was Tammy, and she kept herself busy with gardening, canning, and pretty much anything else that you could imagine an old homesteader taking care of. She lived about ten miles from me, on the outskirts of town in the same house that I grew up in. I loved being home now, but it had taken me a while to be able to drive past Lillie’s old childhood home without bursting into tears or having a mental breakdown. Now, I was okay, and I usually just drove right past, only giving her ghost a small bit of recognition.

“I need you to get the last of the tomatoes out of the garden,” my mom said, moving around the kitchen and getting her tools ready for the day’s activity. “Then I need you to go to the car and bring in the canning supplies. You’re going to help me make sauces today.”

“That sounds riveting,” I said, popping a grape into my mouth and grabbing the basket for the garden. “All I ask is that you send me home some for my freezer. I’m almost out from last year’s crop.”

“Of course,” she said, scoffing. “Like I could eat all of this on my own.”

“No, but the ladies at your church could.” I laughed, walking out the back door.

I spent every Sunday with my mother, even those that I didn’t feel like getting out of bed. Actually, especially those days that I didn’t feel like getting out of bed. I did chores for her, things she needed help with, but lived alone the rest of the time. In between, I got to listen to her harp on me for not having a boyfriend, something that I had given up on a while ago on, though I would never tell her that. My mom, though, was relentless in the pursuit for grandchildren, and these Sundays were less of a relaxing day at Mom’s and more a penance for being a single woman. Most of the time, I was fine with it, but other times, I considered just getting into a non-serious relationship with someone just so that she could stop harping on me, though I knew that was never going to happen. If I had a boyfriend, she would then start asking when we were getting married. If I was married, she would be hounding me for grandchildren. It was a never-ending cycle.

I smiled as I plopped the basket of tomatoes on the counter and grabbed my mom’s keys, watching her put together her tools. She loved doing this. I went out to the car and popped the trunk, lifting the two cases of mason jars and shutting the trunk. I set them down on the trunk and shoved the keys in my pockets, knowing if I dropped and broke her jars, the world as I knew it would end. As I went to pick them back up, I paused, seeing a familiar figure walking down the street. I squinted for a minute, but then realized I wasn’t seeing things. I pushed the boxes back up on the trunk and made sure they weren’t going to fall before taking off in a jog down the street.

“Ollie,” I called out, jogging after him.

He didn’t hear me at first, so I picked up the pace, realizing that I needed to start working out more often. I was losing my breath like I smoked a pack a day. I called out to him again, and his pace slowed, allowing me to stop jogging. Slowly, he turned around and blinked, almost as if he was expecting someone else. His face was white at first, but when he realized who I was, the color started coming back to his cheeks. I wondered if he thought he was losing it, hearing Lillie’s voice like I had thought I had heard many times over the last five years. He was clearly not expecting to see me standing there, which was exactly what I was feeling when I saw him jog straight past me, his eyes zoned out on the road ahead of him.

I was more than a little confused, seeing his face in this neighborhood. I couldn’t help but wonder what he was doing all the way out there. He looked almost bewildered to see me, like he wasn’t expecting it, or maybe like he wasn’t expecting to find me so easily. He had been to Lillie’s parents’ house before but never to mine, so even though he knew I lived in this neighborhood, he couldn’t have known where exactly I was going to be. I had told him that I was coming there, though.

In reality, our dinner had been a complete disaster on Friday night, the evening ending in a ball of tears, valium, and really awkward feelings. The tears and valium being my side of things, once I got home. It was hard for me to believe that he would actually come looking for me. I was pretty sure after that disaster, he wouldn’t even think about trying to seek me out again. Maybe I was wrong. He seemed lost, and it was only natural to move toward what was familiar. I knew that in this town, with our past, I was pretty much the only familiar thing left.

He knew what my plans were for the day because I had told him on the car ride home. I couldn’t help but wonder if he had purposely tracked me down. The question brought feelings to my chest that I hadn’t felt in a really long time. It was like a mixture of excitement and confusion fusing together and creating a knot in my stomach as he breathed heavily, walking toward me in the street. He definitely looked lost, like he was searching for something. In the end, though, it turned out that finding me was not what he was doing all the way out there. Instead, the reasoning was a lot sadder and way more depressing than I was expecting. This guy was having a really hard time, and I was almost glad that I had seen him in the street. Five more minutes picking tomatoes, and I would have completely missed him.

“Hey,” he said, walking up.

“Hey,” I replied. “What are you doing all the way out here?”

“I don’t know,” he said, sighing. “I thought I knew when I started out, but now I am wondering the same thing. I woke up this morning thinking about Lillie, so I went for a jog. That jog turned out to be a little longer than usual, and I ended up here, my feet carrying me before my mind could catch up. I’ve just been walking around the neighborhood because it was where Lillie grew up. I’m not sure what I hoped to find; maybe a spark for my memory, something to fill the void since I moved back here. I don’t know. It’s stupid really.”