A Little Too Late

Chapter 5

Nicole got up from her desk and stretched while yawning. She headed to the kitchen to find something to eat and frowned when she realized there wasn't anything that she wanted to eat. Sighing, she grabbed her purse and phone then left her place.

She pushed the cart into the next aisle and frowned as she skimmed through the food options trying to decide on what she wanted to grab.

"You used to like these," A deep voice said coming up beside her.

She turned to see Marc standing beside her. He grabbed the baked sour cream and cheddar chips and handed them to her.

"No thank you," She shook her head, "I gave up chips a long time ago."

She grabbed some salad croutons and tossed them into the cart, "Those are just as bad as chips," Marc chuckled and she shrugged.

"But they aren't chips, now excuse me," She turned her back on him and started walking.

"Hey," He said hurrying to catch up to her. "Are you mad at us or something?"

She shook her head, "No, I have no reason to be."

"Then what's with the hostility?" He asked as he followed her.

"There is no hostility," She shook her head. "I'm sorry you perceive this conversation that way, but there isn't any. We are mere acquaintances having a civil conversation that must come to an end. I have further shopping to do, excuse me. Have a nice night Mr. Weiland."

"What the hell?" He asked completely dumbfounded. He shook his head and rushed to find her. He grabbed her elbow, "Just what the hell do you mean we are mere acquaintances, Nicole? We are you best friends besides Jessica, of course."

"Kindly remove your hand from me right now," She glared at his hand then up at him. He removed his hand, and she cleared her throat. "I despise repeating myself, but I will this one time so listen clearly. We are mere acquaintances, Mr. Weiland. Yes, at one time in my life you were considered my best friends, but you lost that title when you left for three years without so much as a text or call or even an email. You just left and there was not a single word from all of you for three years. Your family and so called best friend had to learn about your relationship and then failed relationships after that from the public. Not even Erica knew what was going on with all of you. A best friend, as you called me, would know everything that was going on in your lives. Hell," She scoffed and rolled her eyes, "even our soldiers over seas remain in contact with their family members more than you did. I talk to my co-workers that I despise more than we heard from you. Ergo, you lost the title of best friend and became mere acquaintances. Now since I have made it perfectly crystal clear where we stand, kindly leave me alone, Mr. Weiland." She turned her back to him and went down the next aisle.

She finished her shopping and quickly hurried back to her place. She put everything up then just ordered pizza not really feeling like actually making anything to eat now that she went through all that.

Meanwhile Marc groaned and tilted his head back to rest on the back of the couch as he finished telling everyone what happened.

"She has a point, unfortunately," Owen said as he cleaned his glasses. "We could have reached out at any time and we didn't."

"So, what do we do now?" Luke asked. "I don't like being a stranger to her."

"Unfortunately, we may just have to stay that way right now," Silas shrugged. "She is obviously hurt by our stupid actions, and this is the consequence of it. We didn't think about how it affected those around us when we were so focused on those failed relationships. Now that we are out of those toxic relationships we can clearly see how it affected not only us but our loved ones as well. We need to start repairing our relationships and earn their forgiveness and trust again."

"What the fuck do you mean their trust?" Gabe asked confused. "They fucking trust us."

"In some aspects yes," Silas nodded, "But they also don't trust that we wont go ghost again. Especially the girls. They both have said in one way or another but they learned how to live without us and no longer can count on us to be there for them. We have to now show them that it wont happen again."

"Just how the fuck do we do that?"

Victor sighed, "That is the million dollarquestion."