Page 83 of Ablaze

And that sucks more than anything. More than having to learn something totally new at a job I’ve never done. More than trying to fit into the corporate life when I can’t possibly feel any more out-of-place. More than finding a new show on Netflix, only to watch it alone, without him there to let me warm my feet under his thigh or comment on how stupid the show actually is.

We tried to cover the silence between us on the drive to LA with music and meaningless conversation about the weather, the road conditions, logistics for when I got to my new place, but the elephant sat between us like a solid wall. And no matter how much I knew it was my own doing, my fault, I blamed him, too.

Because he promised me . . . He fucking promised, and not even hours later, everything changed.

“Is this how it’s going to be now?” I glared at him from my passenger seat. “You’re going to be all weird and distant?”

He’d chuckled. Chuckled! As if I were delusional. “Not being weird or distant with you, Mala. I’m right fucking here.”

I looked out the window with my arms wrapped around my chest and mumbled, “It definitely doesn’t feel like it.”

And despite the casual tone he was going for, I couldn’t miss the way he white-knuckled the steering wheel. “What would you like me to do?” He glanced at me. “What do you need from me?”

I gritted my teeth and said what I knew I shouldn’t. “What I’d love, Dean, is for you to fucking forget last night happened, like you’d promised.”

He stayed quiet for a long moment, and I almost took back what I said, but before I could, he nodded, his jaw as hard as his glare on the road. “I must have forgotten what I promised.” He placed an index on his temple and blinked animatedly, like a character from some sci-fi movie. “There.” He smiled without a lick of amusement. “Forgotten and erased from my memory. You happy?”

I wasn’t and he knew it, but the tingles inside my nose from impending tears and my throat feeling clogged just had me turning my head to look out the window again.

Aside from the detached way he helped me get settled into my apartment and the long inhale I took of him when he wrapped his arms around me before he left, those are the last memories I have of being in my best friend’s presence.

And while I’ve replayed our night together more times than I can even count, it always ends with the same despair he left me in the morning after.

God, I miss him. I miss him so badly, sometimes I feel like I’m being pulled underground by quicksand. The more I fight it, the deeper I go in, and now I feel like I just need to succumb to it.

I’ve asked Rohan and Malcolm about him as much as I can without seeming like a creeper, but my questions are never what I really want to ask, anyway. Sometimes they aren’t even what either of them can answer. Like, what has he been up to? Is he seeing someone? God, that makes my stomach twist, but it’s the one I think about the most. Does he miss me? Because he doesn’t seem to miss me.

Sitting down at my desk, I look at the three dots jumping around on my phone screen with my heart hammering in my chest. Where he used to answer my texts almost instantaneously, he’s just now responding to the message I sent to him earlier this morning. His texts always did things to my heart, but I never felt anxious reading them like I do now.

Me: What starts with a T and ends with a T and has T in it?

Sparky: No idea. What’s up?

I reel back with my mouth turned down. No idea? What’s up? That’s how he responds after hours of me waiting? Not even an attempt at a dumb response to make me laugh? And the ‘what’s up,’ like I need a reason to text him. Like I’m bothering him with my text . . .

Am I just looking too far into his response? Being overly sensitive?

Getting up to close my office door, I pull back my shoulders and FaceTime him from my desk. I’m tired of holding in my frustration and hurt just to not come across as needy. If I’m needy, then I’m needy. So-fucking-be-it.

Dean’s face shows up a moment later, sweat beading above his brow, his cheeks pink. I’m surprised he even picked up, to be honest.

As much as I don’t want to recall it at this very moment, the pink in his cheeks, creeping down to his neck, reminds me of the way he looked when he was hovering above me not too long ago.

Still, he looks . . . different. Harder? More distant? For a second, I wonder if I’ve even called the right guy.

“Hey!” I somehow voice around the stone lodged in my throat. And as much as I want to scream at him, shake him for the way he’s being, I school my features. Because despite the way he’s being, this is all my fault. I’m the one who couldn’t hold back any longer. I’m the one who triggered it all.

I’m the one who ruined everything.

His brows lift, but I don’t get the same smile he usually reserves for me. “Sup?”

With a barbell, along with the emblem for their station partially visible behind his head, I know he’s at the gym inside the fire station.

“Nothing.” I hesitate, feeling awkward. “I . . . I just haven’t talked to you properly in a while and . . . I miss you.”

I pull the collar of my V-neck sweater, as a force of habit, realizing it does little to cover me up the way my sweatshirt does, and I notice Dean’s eyes dip toward the top of my scar. Whether he’s happy about what he sees–whether he realizes the changes I’m making are not just due to my new job, but his words to me that night–he doesn’t show it.

“You’re talking to me now.”

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