But I had to answer because we were in this, and I wasn’t going to hide. I’d messed up in a way. I had bothered him too much when he’d been busy; I could take responsibility for it. But that was the worst I’d done, and I’d go to my grave thinking that. “Since I stopped texting you back? That’s not how it happened. I didn’t just disappear, Zac. I’ve been around.” I tried to smile at him, but I failed pretty miserably because this hurt a lot.
“I see Paw-Paw once a year, and I’ve only seen your mom a few times.” I didn’t know why neither one of them had never mentioned it to him. But they hadn’t. I snuck in and out of conversations that revolved around him, avoiding them so that I could avoid talking about seeing him. More like not seeing him. I didn’t want to talk about it or make it seem like a big deal.
At the end of the day, it had been Zac’s decision not to get in contact with me.
Not in years.
He’d been busy. I understood. Why would he have worried and sat there and wondered how his old friend was doing when he had so many new ones? It wasn’t like I ever wondered what my friends from elementary school were up to.
But that had been different, the voice in my head whispered. And I knew she—that voice—was right. But….
This wasn’t what I had wanted or why I had come over. I didn’t want to talk about it. All I wanted was to move on, to be fine with where we were now.
But apparently Zac did want to talk about it after so freaking long.
“Why haven’t we seen each other?”
You’re just a little kid. Zac has better things to do, honey. Do you understand? He’s in the NFO now. He has more important people to spend time with. Don’t take it personally.
The words echoed in my head once and then twice as Zac’s Adam’s apple bobbed again in front of me.
But that hadn’t been totally it, had it? It had just been the beginning. The tip of the iceberg.
Him ignoring me had happened afterward, after the seed had been planted and watered and germinated.
I couldn’t help it; I got defensive. For the younger Bianca who had loved her friend a little too much. That was the most she had been guilty of. “You’re asking me why?”
That blond-bristled chin dipped.
“Because we hadn’t been in the same city at the same time in years,” I told him, which was also part of it, and also not the whole of it. I’d just made certain we weren’t. Whenever he played in Houston, I made it a point to go visit Connie so that I’d have an excuse not to be around if Boogie came into town to watch. I knew my sister was fully aware of what I was doing, but that was just because she knew me too well.
But that excuse wasn’t enough for him apparently. “But why? I know you had to have come visit.” He took a deep breath, and I could tell, I could tell he was thinking, thinking, and thinking—thinking about me and him and how ten years had gone by somehow and he hadn’t realized it. “We used to see each other all the time,” he said, like I didn’t fucking know that. “Then, one second to the next, you dropped out of my life, moved across the country, and I didn’t see you or hear from you in forever.”
Uh.
Something hot and spiky appeared in my throat, but I ignored it. At least I tried my best to. Because this wasn’t what I wanted to talk about now or ever. “Yeah, back when things were less complicated we saw each other a lot. I’ve been busy. You’ve been busy. I moved to North Carolina because I didn’t have anywhere else to go after I graduated high school, Zac.” Because my parents had decided to leave just as quickly as they’d arrived, and my grandmother had been buried, and I hadn’t wanted to live with my aunts and uncles long-term.
Unlike him, I’d never forgotten him; I’d just kept going with a Zac-shaped hole in my heart.
And it had been the other way around. He’d dropped out of my life. None of this had been my fault.
But his “So?” cut me straight down the center. Deep and unforgiving. “Before you left, I texted you,