Chapter 50: New Year's Resolution
At 11:49 pm, my phone rang.
It vibrating in my back pocket was the only way I could tell it was even ringing thanks to the Spice Girls on blast in Gabe's small apartment.
Leaning into Gabe, I yelled, "I'll be right back!"
"But the ball is dropping in ten minutes!"
"I'll be back by then!"
"This better not be you trying to get out of kissing me at midnight!"
Chuckling, I threw him a wink. "Wouldn't dream of it."
I weaved through the handful of people Gabe invited over for New Year's Eve, passing smiles to the ones I knew as I made my way out into the empty hallway. Quickly, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and hit answer before checking who was calling.
"Hello?"
A sharp and deeply irritated sigh greeted me from the other end.
"You know tonight's supposed to be my wedding night?"
My chest expanded with shock.
Mel?
A few seconds passed in silence, my eyes darting back and forth across the dingy carpet, waiting to see if her voice was a dream. She and I hadn't spoken in over a month. Not since I left her house with the hacked up pieces of my heart trailing behind.
"Helloooo?"
"I'm here," I blurted, realizing I hadn't spoken.
"Did you hear me? About the fact that today was going to be my wedding day, and instead I'm at a shitty office party?"
My eyes shut, and I leaned back against the door.
Of course I knew what today was supposed to be. It was the first thought in my head when I woke up this morning in a new apartment, in a new city, in a new life. I was here instead of standing by my sister's side as she said 'I do' to the man of my dreams.
"I did," I answered softly. "I just don't want to say the wrong thing."
"You see, that might be what shocks me more about this whole thing. You're always so careful and so polite, and then you go and do something so fucking far out of left field for you."
Gloom sunk my chest in with a sigh as I picked up on the slur lathering her words.
She was drunk.
"I know."
"For you to do what you did knowing how it feels..." Guilt twisted my stomach inside out as I listened to her voice shake on the other end.
Mel might have been drunk enough for this conversation, but I certainly wasn't.
She was diving headfirst into a conversation I'd imagined between us hundreds of times when I couldn't sleep at night. So many times I thought of what I would say, how I would go about it, and now, all the well-thought out, insightful comments I had planned were drawing a big blank.
"You deserved a lot better than that," I spoke quietly, slumping my head into my free hand and hoping I wasn't saying the wrong thing. Any small misstep in this conversation on my part, and Mel could throw out whatever drunken whim she had tonight to want to talk to me.
She sighed. "I didn't call to yell at you."
"Then why did you call?"
A pause hung over the phone.
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Tempting /A Jordan Knight fanfic ✔️
Fanfiction(Completed) All my life, I had worked tirelessly to achieve perfection. Perfection was in my blood, and so was the art of dance. All that hard work had earned me my dream job as a professional dancer at the ripe age of twenty-four, the perfect boyf...
