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29: Do Something

                        29: Do Something

Dear Diary,

Things have changed. Since the Idris thing. With Him. With Grant. With me. I don't know what it means—what we mean anymore. I've been so desperate for us to spend time together, a pathetic attempt to patch things over and pretend that nothing's broken. Time away from Idris and his smug smile—flashing back to his large hands wrapped around my waist, the sweat from his skin mingling with mine. Time away from his partner scowling at the idea of us beneath his tattoos. He's just as eager to get away from me, this love I thought we'd carved spinning into disgust. I book nights at the motel and he doesn't show. I have the scratchy duvets rubbing at my skin—reminding me of the abrasiveness of this relationship, of everything that doesn't fit where I wanted it to.

The silent treatment is so immature of him. It's not what's healthy—what I wanted when I pursued him in the first place. If I wanted brooding I'd have dated a guy my own age. But he's called today, finally making contact and I'm all too eager to do whatever he says. He's always known that, the way I'd do just about anything for him. He's good at remembering things, my existence being one of them. He remembers where we first met, too. McKenna's Warehouse, back to the beginning.

Devin.

◦ ▲ ◦ ▲ ◦

"I'm sorry, Skylar," I say again, my hands clammy around my phone. I've done nothing but apologise since I got Charlie's phone call—for having to cut our movie night short, for the way it feels like I've been lying to my friends for months.

"Kas, it's fine," Skylar waves me away. He hasn't accepted my apologies since they started, reaching his limit of listening to shitty excuses from shitty people he used to call his friends—Charlie, Fred, me—falling like water sliding off of his skin. I hate that this is what everything has turned into recently, continuously apologising as things slip further and further out of my control, losing myself in things that are slowly rotting me from the inside out. "We'll do something another night," he tells me, pushing his long arms into his jacket, blonde hair falling into his face. He smiles as he looks back at me, my own thin and watery.

"Yeah," I say, turning my phone over in my hands. "I'm—it's just there's stuff with Charlie a—"

"Charlie?" Snapping closed the case to the DVD, I can hear everything that Skylar isn't saying. It's the beginning, it's the end, it's nulling the in between into the void. What does it even matter if things are still running in the same vicious cycle that I wanted to get out of. "You're talking to him again?"

"I—" the words I want to say and the words I can say belong in two very different categories, and I'm unsure which one is appropriate. We're talking, we're feuding, we're trying to solve a murder, I'm allowing him to hurt my feelings and then get away with it with weak apologies. I'm Kasia Andrews, and it feels like I'm back at square one.

"It's complicated," Skylar finishes, nodding his head. I watch him turn to push the DVD back in his bag.

"No, it isn't." I tell him, sounding surer about this than anything I've said to anyone spanning this past week. It's not complicated because I don't want it to be complicated anymore. "Charlie and I . . . there isn't a Charlie and I. For the longest time I—" my hands do things to say the words I can't get a grasp of, held out in front of me as though if I reach out far enough they might become tangible. "—I thought that there being a Charlie and I would be the best thing—it'd be what everyone wanted, and everything would be easier."