D is for Deacon (Men of ALPHAbet Mountain)

Then it went to shit.

The first text to Rebecca went unanswered for a couple of hours. That wasn’t completely unusual. I had gotten a text the night before saying she was going to be staying late at the parlor and there was so much to do, so we didn’t have a good-night phone call or anything. The good-morning text was responded to with a simple “morning” message hours later.

I tried to shrug that off as her just getting up late, and while I did some more work on the garden area, I texted back. It took long periods of time to respond, and each response was one or two words. The conversation was all me, and it was alarming. She was pulling away, but I didn’t know why.

Why didn’t I get any say in what was going on? I started to feel like Friday night’s cuddling and early night to bed was a way of saying goodbye. If I had known that, it would have been one thing. We could have dealt with it like adults. But she was seemingly ghosting me, and it was upsetting. S wasn’t even really ghosting me because she was still replying to me, but it sounded like I was bothering her.

By the time I got up Monday, I was in one hell of a mood. She hadn’t texted back the night before when I wished her good night, and I didn’t even bother to text her in the morning. If she wanted to play the silent game, I could do that too. Eventually, she would either call me and give me the news as to what was going on, break up with me, or inform me there was nothing to break up since we were never anything to begin with.

I knew I had gotten too close, too fast. I did this to myself. I brought all this on myself, even though I knew better.

I barely spent any time in the office on Monday morning, opting to go in, check the paperwork, and then set up an out-of-office auto-email and head out. The entire crew was working on one site that morning, and I headed out to them. But, by the time I got there, the crew had already done most of the work, and I had very few physical things to do to help me work off my aggression and frustration.

Everett knew something was up. He always did. At one point in the day, I could hear Carter calling for me, but I was at a spot in my work where I wasn’t in the mood to stop what I was doing. If he wanted to talk to me, he could come talk to me where I was working rather than shouting from far away and expecting me to come to him. It wasn’t how I usually handled Carter, considering his hip and leg, but he had been moving around really well lately, and I just didn’t feel like stopping what I was doing.

Then I heard Everett stop him, and the two spoke in hushed tones for a few moments. After that, Carter stopped calling for me, and I went back to my work. When we finished, it was barely ten thirty, and I headed back to the office in my own truck, not talking to anyone.

I headed into the office and got cleaned up before ducking into the office Everett and I shared. Carter and Everett came in not long after and steered wide and clear of me. Everett went into Carter’s office or hung out in the lobby, and Carter and Lauren stayed near her desk speaking for the most part. I put my head down and went to work, not wanting to interact with anyone if I didn’t have to. Especially since my phone still hadn’t alerted me to a text.

“Hey, bud,” Everett said about an hour later. “We’re heading to lunch. You coming?”

“No,” I said and turned back to the paperwork I was going through.

“We’re heading to the diner. Are you sure?”

“Yes. I’m fine.”

“You don’t seem fine, boss,” Everett said. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” I said. “Just busy. Bring me back a sandwich.”

“Any particular one?”

“Whatever one you feel like bringing back,” I said.

“Alright,” he said.

As he turned and walked away, I could feel the steam rising around my neck. I checked my phone again, and still no texts. What was going on? Part of me wanted to just call her until she answered and demand to know what was happening. What had I done that made it so unbearable that she was just going to ignore me until I got the hint?

The trucks outside rumbled to life, and I could hear them pull out of the gravel parking lot, heading toward Dina’s diner. Maybe I should have gone with them. Then I could see Rebecca face-to-face while she worked the lunch shift and try to get her to give me some indication of what was going on. For a moment, I stood, grabbing my keys and staring at the door.