Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
🕷🤍🕷
"Hey, hon'? Your... best friend is calling!"
"Peter? Just- let it ring I'll get it after!"
"Alright. I'll leave it in here for you."
I listened to my ringtone as the hot shower water cascaded down my skin. The guilt had completely set in after three long days of ignoring him.
It's for his own good that I shove him away. That I shut him out of my life completely. Because he's still so attached and he needs to get over me.
Yet I'm struggling too. Likely just as much. Because having to shut down and out your childhood best friend is painful. Especially Peter.
There's just always been that lingering tension between us. A suspense. Like the both of us have been anticipating for something to happen for years but it never did.
I grew tired of waiting. I was exhausted playing a game of chase and didn't have time to waste to wait for him.
I've got plans. Plans that require me to settle and get married. Dreams that include me finishing school and finding the best location for my business.
I can't put my entire life on hold for someone who doesn't know what he wants.
I didn't want to get out of the shower, knowing I had to face Peter's probable string of messages. But the water started running cold. And I despise cold showers.
It's inevitable. All of it really.
I found myself drying off and tying my hair up into a bun. Then I emerged from the bathroom just in time to catch my fiancé headed off to work.
I bid him farewell with a hug and a kiss and sent him on his way after making sure he had his coffee money and his lunch.
"Better now than later," I grumbled as I pulled up Peter's contact and hit the call button. "Here we go I guess."
"Finally!"
He sounds pissed. He sounds enraged.
"Whoah! Okay, hello to you too, Peter!" I scoffed frustratedly. "What's your problem?!"
"Me?!" He gasped. "I'm sorry, you've been the one ghosting me for three days. What the hell?"
"Parker, we need to not hang out anymore."
"Ouch. Last names again. I see. You really have moved on haven't you?"
"Moved on?!" I rolled my eyes. "Peter you make it sound like we were dating!"
"Because that's what it felt like!" He fired back. I noticed a shake in his voice.
"Please don't cry. It's not worth it," I sighed heavily. "Things aren't meant to be permanent! Everything is temporary! This was... just one of those things."
Just saying those words was painful. I couldn't imagine how hard it must've been for him to hear them.
"I trusted you. Y'know? I gave you some of the best years of my life. I spent time I didn't have and risked more than I should've just so you never felt alone. I trusted you. And you still think it's okay to completely desert me like this."
"Peter. We both don't want to do this. And you don't see it now but you'll see it eventually. But you have to understand that we need this. Whatever the hell was going on between us or the lack of knowing was hurting us both. I'm... doing this for you. I hope you see it."
If it's not today, it'll be another. Though I myself don't even believe that. At all.
Peter was deathly silent for a painfully long stretch of time. Before he spoke the four words that shattered my heart in countless tiny pieces.
