27
I paced back and forth in the main room for almost twenty minutes, biting my thumbnail, trying to figure out what I was going to say.
In the end, I just decided to keep it simple.
I’m okay,
I texted back.
Don’t worry, I’m fine. I just don’t want to talk right now.
I pressed ‘Send.’
Within sixty seconds, the barrage started.
Kaitlyn, PLEASE, you HAVE to talk to me!
Where are you?!
Just talk to me!
Why are you doing this to me?!
This is the first time you’ve texted or talked to me in two weeks, and that’s all you have to say?! That you ‘don’t want to talk right now’?! You disappear on me, and that’s it?! You get total fucking say-so on what happens?!
Of course, I’m cleaning up the spelling and grammar. I think he was pretty sloshed when he sent most of the texts, which rendered a good deal of them nearly unintelligible.
Three hours, 157 text messages, and fifteen angry / desperate / heartbroken / drunken voicemails from Derek later, I sat down to dinner with Ryan. He had fixed chicken piccata with lemon and capers, plus potatoes au gratin and roasted asparagus. A blueberry cobbler from Mrs. MacCruder sat cooling in the oven.
“So,” he asked, “did you text him?”
“Yes,” I said sheepishly. “You were right.”
He raised an eyebrow. “About him going crazy?”
“Yeah. Over a hundred and fifty text messages and counting.”
Ryan whistled. “Wow. You didn’t tell him where you are, did you?”
“No. And I don’t think I’m going to.”
He nodded. “That’s probably for the best.”
“You were right.”
“I’m just sorry it didn’t go better.”
He sounded one hundred percent sincere, which made me feel ashamed.
“I’m… sorry about how I acted earlier,” I said. “I apologize.”
“Nothing to apologize for.”
“No, I… I wasn’t very nice.”
“You were under a lot of stress.”
“Well,
you
were nice to
me
.”
He smiled. “I wasn’t under as much stress.”
I laughed. He had that way of sneaking past my defenses and lightening the mood.
“Well, anyway, I just wanted to say I’m sorry… and thank you.”
“Again, no need to be sorry – but ‘thank you’ for what?”
“For keeping a level head in all of this.”
He smiled and raised his wine glass in a toast. “To level heads – may they always prevail.”
“Hear, hear,” I said, and drank in agreement.
His words came back to me in the days that followed, almost like an ironic foreshadowing.
To level heads – may they always prevail.
Unfortunately, they didn’t.
Not by a long shot.