Page 21 of Half-Hearted
I went to bed.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
7
Joel
The T-shirt Alexishad borrowed arrived at my doorstep in a small cardboard box exactly forty-eight hours after she’d stormed out of my life wearing it. It was freshly laundered, neatly folded, and entirely unaccompanied. There was no note, no call, no text.
That was six weeks ago. I hadn’t heard from her since.
Week one, I’d tried to convince myself that everything was going to be fine. She just needed a bit of space and time, which was understandable. Expected, even. Eventually, the silent treatment would end, and everything would go back to the way it was.
By week two, though, she still hadn’t called me back, I still hadn’t slept, and every time a phone within my general vicinity went off, it swept my insides into a whirling, anticipating frenzy. But it was never her.
Week three was when I’d sent the flowers, the email, and the apology cards, all of which had gone undelivered, unread, and unanswered. The one time I’d attempted to visit her apartment and apologize in person, I was promptly shooed away by an apologetic (but unyielding) Jane.
Week four came with the depressing realization that maybe this whole thing was… more permanent than I’d initially thought. I spent hours rereading our old conversations and repeatedly going through every last detail of that morning, wondering what I could have done differently.
Week five was a melancholic blur. I could barely remember any of it. It felt like I’d lost my mind a thousand times over and was stuck in a never-ending loop of checking my phone every chance I had, spending hours after work typing out new, carefully manicured apologies and not sending them and cursing myself for feeling as useless as I did. I was exhausted. I was restless. I wasn’t sleeping. I wasn’t eating properly. I wasn’t functioning anymore, and I didn’t know what the fuck to do with myself.
But then week six came, bringing with it the smallest sliver of hope. Because no matter how furious Alexis was at me, she would never skip my mother’s birthday because of it. There was just no way.
I’d been counting down the seconds all week. Once the celebrations were over, I was going to pull Alexis aside, and I was going to fix this no matter what. Whatever it took to get her to justtalkto me again.
Problem was she was currently twenty minutes late.
“So, uh, who else are we expecting?” I asked in the most casual tone I could manage, adjusting the rolled-up sleeve of my dark green dress shirt. The one Alexis had picked out.
Dad squinted through the thick lens of his oval glasses, surveying the thirty or so guests currently peppered across their modest backyard. We’d spent all of last night and a good portion of this morning setting everything up while my mother enjoyed a well-deserved overnight “spa-cation” with her four sisters. She was currently seated at the large outdoor table, cry laughing at a dramatic retelling of what sounded like another one of Aunt Margie’s disastrous dates.
The woman had a more active dating life at sixty years old than most people I knew in their twenties. Myself included.
“Most of ’em are here already, I’d say,” Dad noted. “We’re just waiting on a couple of the guys from the shop and the Milani kids now. Doesn’t sound like the boys will be makin’ it, though.”
They wouldn’t be. Ethan was in Seattle for what must have been the seventh time already this year for work, though he’d called my mother and promised to make it up to her when he was in town again in a couple of weeks. And Grey… well, Grey was a different story altogether.
My father was still squinting.
“Your prescription okay? When was the last time you got your eyes checked?”
“Yeah, yeah,” he grumbled, taking his glasses off so he could clean them with his sleeve. “Prescription’s fine. The lenses are just a bit smudged, see?”
No, I didn’t. They looked clean. His eyesight had been declining steadily over the last year, and he didn’t seem to want to do anything about it. “Too many damn doctor appointments when you get to be around my age,” he always complained. “I’m sick of ’em.”
I contemplated nagging him about it a little more, but my mother beat me to it.
“Jonathan Bennett!”
Dad slid his glasses back on with impressive speed, but it was too late. His wife was already storming over, the telling V on her forehead etching deeper into her brown skin with every step she took. “I can see you squinting all the way from across the yard.”
Dad smiled fondly, making googly eyes at her before he kissed her cheek. “How are you enjoying yourself, darling? Having fun?”
Her tone immediately thawed. “I’m not letting you charm your way out of this conversation again. I keep telling you those darn glasses aren’t doing their…”
I didn’t hear the rest of what she said, my attention stolen by a flash of red in my peripherals.
I knew it was her before my eyes found Alexis. She floated into the party wearing a flowy, shoulderless red dress, full lips painted a matching strawberry. Her long, glossy hair was gathered into her signature sleek ponytail, and the only accessory she wore was a dainty pair of gold, vine-shaped earrings that dropped all the way down to her bare shoulders, grazing her smooth, sun-kissed skin.
