Page 41 of Not a Friend (Crescent Light #1)

One Year Ago, January

What’s a word for not wanting to be social, but not having a good enough excuse to bail?

I drove with no clear direction, counting to ten over and over again.

The tears sprang to my eyes, no matter how hard I tried to hold them back, spilling silently over my cheeks.

The only sound outside of my deep, forcefully controlled breaths was the occasional sniffles and hiccups that snuck out.

Like my tears, my thoughts threatened to spill over and run rampant, too, but I tried to force them down.

I failed miserably at both. I was going to fall apart at any second. The searing pain of rejection from all directions was too much, and it ate at me from the inside out.

My project was rejected.

What if that was the very best that would ever come from me? What if that was as good as it would get, and yet it was still passed over? What did that say about me? About my future? Am I so na?ve to believe I stood a chance?

Self-doubt would do nothing but make me feel worse, but I couldn’t stop it.

It was already too far gone. Never mind the fact that Ha-Joon’s project was probably amazing, and he probably put just as much time and effort into it as I had.

My happiness for him meant nothing at the moment, not when the dismissal cut me down to the bone.

My head gave a dull thud behind my left eye.

Kieran.

Grown-up, mature, kind Kieran. Silly, wide-eyed, ignorant, unwanted Olive. I couldn’t shake the image of his perplexed face, the way he was so confused at my reaction.

Why did he assume I was still dating around? What did I do to make him think that?

He clearly hadn’t stopped seeing other women.

Embarrassed was an understatement.

Wasn’t he the one who pursued me ? Wasn’t he the one who sought me out?

Sent me food when I was stuck working long hours, unwilling to step away?

Called me just because he was thinking about me?

Wasn’t he the one who went out of his way to be attentive and romantic?

The one who gave me no reason to believe he wanted anything less than a serious relationship?

Did I just read the signs completely wrong?

No. I didn’t read anything wrong.

But was it a betrayal if it wasn’t intentional? If he genuinely thought I was dating around, too? Maybe not, but some communication would have been fucking nice. What happened to bare minimum communication?

Good riddance, I told myself. A mantra I barely believed. I wanted something real. I thought I could’ve had it with him. Maybe if I forced myself to repeat it enough times, the hurt would eventually go away. But in that moment, it really, really hurt.

More than my feelings, my ego was bruised. My pride. It clutched and held on like a vice. There was no use in pretending the hurt wasn’t there. Everything in the last forty-eight hours felt so big, and it was compounding in my heart, doubling by the second. Another sob bubbled out of me.

I forced a tight lid on the pain as I drove.

My head pounded in protest with every heartbeat.

Thoughts raced with no regard for my efforts.

I reminded myself of what I was actually upset about to stop my anxiety from compounding and snowballing the hurt, but god, it was hard.

All too quickly, my mind jumped to every little thing weighing on my heart, relevant or not.

I missed Gemma. I missed my mom. All I wanted to do was cuddle up on the couch, lay my head in her lap, and listen to her hum. I’d never been good at bottling up my feelings. It was a horrible coping mechanism that tended to have disastrous results when they finally boiled over.

Being alone wasn’t a good idea when I felt like it might overflow, but I kept driving anyway.

I was more than halfway to Hartwood before I realized what I was doing, like my soul knew where to go even if my mind didn’t. The tears suddenly became that much harder to hold back.

When I got a few miles out, I figured I needed a plan and decided to call Gemma. It went to voicemail on the second ring, and a text followed shortly after.

Gemma

Sorry! At the movies. Everything okay?

Right. She and Grant were probably having a date night.

Pulling into the nearest parking lot—a chain family restaurant near Sumner U’s campus—I found a spot and parked.

Me

Yeah, just called to chat. Love you!

Gemma

Love you too!

Letting my head fall back against the headrest, I sat in silence for a full minute.

I closed my eyes, grounding myself, and actively recognized the sensation from the top of my head to the tips of my fingers to the bottoms of my feet, diligently pushing down the building anxiety.

My mind wandered to anything and everything that was not my job, was not Kieran, was not the hurt I felt.

I should have known where it would land instead.

Despite two years without contact and the hurt he’d also been responsible for once upon a time, his was the voice I wanted to hear.

He probably isn’t even in town. It’s Saturday night; I bet he has a show.

The silence of my car was loud as I debated it.

Families piled into their minivans around me, hands loaded down with takeaway boxes from the restaurant. My stomach growled, but I didn’t move.

Outside of what happened with Nate and me, outside of the sex, or whether or not we had feelings for each other, we were close at one point.

Friends. I questioned a lot of things when it came to him, but I never once questioned if the connection we’d developed was genuine.

I missed our friendship, regardless of how long it had been.

And I did not want to be alone.

With shaking hands, I unlocked my phone and scrolled to the number I could never bring myself to delete.

The line rang once. Twice .

This is stupid.

Pulling the phone away from my ear on the third ring, I made to cancel the call until I heard his voice say my name for the first time in two years.

“Oli?”

Air whooshed from my lungs, and I couldn’t stop the ever-insistent lump in my throat from rising again at my old nickname. It took a few beats to answer.

“Nate?”

“What’s wrong?”

He knew. Of course, he knew. I’m sure he knew something was wrong the second he saw my name on his phone. With the way we left things, something would have to be wrong for me to speak to him again.

His loaded question hit me in the chest with a fatal blow. A sob bubbled, and I couldn’t hold it back before it escaped my lips. Fat tears gathered and overflowed, staining my cheeks as they descended.

God, why did I call him? Do I just have a penchant for humiliating myself?

But for a reason I didn’t know and would never be able to explain, I finally let go. The tension I’d been holding since I submitted my project snapped and released. Hot tears fell in a stream of heavy droplets, the force of my sobs shaking my shoulders.

Nate didn’t push for an answer to his question. Didn’t panic at my emotional outburst. He didn’t speak at all, in fact. He just sat with me in silence, breathing slowly on the other side of the line while I cried.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered when I was finally calm enough to speak.

His voice was low and patient. “What are you apologizing for?”

“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “Nothing. Everything. ”

He paused like he was rolling his next question around his mouth. “Are you okay?”

The gentle concern in his voice outlined the question he asked. He didn’t ask me what was wrong again, and he didn’t ask me what happened. He asked me if I was okay.

I tried to think of an answer, but came up empty again. “I don’t know that either,” I chuckled dryly, roughly wiping my nose with the sleeve of my sweater. There was another long silence, but the comforting sound of his breathing on the other side remained.

“Where are you?” he asked.

I had to laugh at that because the honest answer was truly so pathetic.

“Um,” I stalled, looking out the window. “Crying in my car in the parking lot of a restaurant by my old apartment?”

“Really?” I couldn’t tell if he sounded amused or not. I imagined his eyebrows pulling together and his lips tugging into a skeptical smirk.

“Yeah.” Honesty was the best policy at that point. I was already in an emotional black hole. What could possibly make it worse? “I started driving and eventually ended up here. I don’t know why.”

The sound of shuffling fabric in the background told me he was moving around. “Do you,” he said tentatively, “want to tell me what happened? You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

I weighed the question. Did I want to open the floodgates? Did I want to tell him about Kieran? About the project I worked so hard on? About my involvement with The Mountain ?

A wave of rejection washed over me again.

And frustration.

And shame.

And anger.

I was grateful for the out he offered, so I took it.

“No,” I told him. “I don’t think I want to talk about it right now. I’ll just get upset all over again.”

“That’s fair,” he answered pointedly, patiently.

More movement from his side of the line, sounds I couldn’t quite pinpoint.

Distant music, a door shutting, multiple voices talking.

It suddenly dawned on me that he very well could have been right in the middle of something, just like Gemma was, before I called him unannounced to bawl my eyes out.

I forced him to be my emotional crutch without even giving him a chance to tell me he was busy.

“Oh, god.” I pressed at the dull, thudding pain in my left temple. “Nate, I’m so sorry if I barged in on your night by calling. If you have to go—”

“No. Not at all,” he said, stopping me. “You’re fine.”

I felt guilty for pulling him away from his plans. As much as he was trying to hide it, I interrupted his night. I pictured him hanging out backstage at some music venue, lounging, having drinks with the guys. Sneaking out the back door just to take my call.

Does he have a girlfriend? Do I even care? Should I care?