him, he grew defensive and angry. He grabbed me by the wrist, yanked me off the bed, shoved me out of his room, and slammed the door shut. He didn’t speak to me for two weeks.
Fourteen days is a long time when you share a tiny apartment with only a thin wall separating your beds. After that night, things were awkward. More so, when I found the photos in his bedroom of me. Me sleeping. Me laughing. Me at various angles, making it obvious I wasn’t aware the photos were being taken.
I moved out the same day and in with Greg. I had nowhere else to go, not on such short notice. I’d left the photos on the kitchen counter with a note that said: this is not okay.
I’m not sure what I had expected to come of it. But it wasn’t silence. Truthfully, I thought he’d reach out with some sort of explanation. What kind of explanation, I can’t say, but our friendship was important to me. Secretly, and naively, I hoped he’d beg me to come back. I hoped that things would go back to the way they’d been before. It didn’t help that he had driven a wedge between me and the rest of my friends with his frequent antics. It was always something. Even so, I’m almost sure that, with the proper apology, I would have forgiven him. I never got the chance. He ghosted me.
At the time, I was hurt. Now I can see that it was for the best. It’s clear that our friendship was a concept, a fantasy. Something I had gotten swept up in. By the time I realized what was happening, it took drastic measures to find my way out. Hindsight being twenty-twenty, I understand how I led him on. Thinking he batted for the other team, I saw it as harmless. But it wasn’t harmless.
I reach out and touch Greg’s thigh. “Please don’t be mad.”
He looks up at me and shakes his head. “I’m not mad, Amy. I’m disappointed.”
“I understand. But right now we need to focus on Blair.”
“Why do I get the feeling there’s more you’re not telling me?”
“Because there is.”
He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath in. On the exhale, he opens them and puts me in my place. “For fuck’s sake. What?”
“I bought a gun.”
“Of course you did.”
“It’s missing.”
His head cocks to the side. “What do you mean it’s missing?”
“After the break-in, it was—” I shrug. “It was just gone.”
“And you didn’t think mentioning this to the police was worth it?”
“I didn’t know until after they were gone. I had it hidden. And at the time I didn’t think to look.”
“Did Alex help with that, too?”
“With what?”
“With the purchase of the gun?” He rolls his eyes. “I can’t see you just waltzing into the gun store.”
I rear back. “Well, I did.”
It takes a second for the incongruous mental image to land. His eyes narrow. “There’s something else you’re not telling me.”
One of Blair’s alarms sounds. “Yes,” I say, glancing at the small window in the door, watching for a nurse who should appear any moment. “But we can’t discuss it here.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Blair spends three days in the hospital. Three long and arduous, soul-sucking days. Three days is also the amount of time Greg and I hardly speak, unless medically necessary. It’s a tense time revolving around Blair’s prognosis and recovery. Factor in shuffling back and forth between the hospital to care for Naomi, plus babysit our jobs, and well, there’s not much left over for the two of us.
Thankfully, we get a lucky break. The CSF leak clears up on its own, and Blair’s knee surgery goes as well as expected. She suffers headaches daily, and she sleeps a lot, but by the time we are released we’re all just happy to get to go home. To be able to sleep in our own beds, and shower in our own shower, to not be woken up every hour by well-meaning nurses, makes the joy palpable. It feels like Christmas, almost.
Before we are released from the hospital, a group of colleagues, including my entire realty office, banded together. They disassembled the old swing set and purchased and reassembled a brand-new one. They stocked our pantry and our refrigerator and had the guest room downstairs transformed into a temporary bedroom for Blair and me.
Some of our neighbors dropped off wrapped Christmas gifts. Their generosity took a lot off my plate, and for that I am indelibly grateful.