Aaron and Kat (Wattys 2017)

Chapter 8

KAT February 12th

'Oh, my God, I'm so glad to see you!' Marie laughs and hugs me. When I don't hug her back, she pulls back with a worried expression on her face. 'Something wrong?' She asks.

'Um, yeah.' I tell her, my tone implying that that should be obvious by now. 'You have been bailing on me all week.'

'Wait, did we agree on a sleepover? Mall trip? Movie night?' Marie asks confused.

'Lunch?' I supply but it doesn't seem to ring a bell. 'You bailed on me for lunch for the whole week.'

'Wait, you're annoyed because you had to eat lunch without me a couple times?' Marie looks genuinely confused. 'Come on, Kat. You know I was with Carter. He has to work a lot, you know that. It's not like we have a lot of time to hang out, so when we have a chance we should take it.'

Unbelievable. Un-fucking-believable. I don't know what to say. 'Seriously?' Is what I finally come up with. 'You don't care about the fact that you left me on my own?' Of course I wasn't totally on my own, but Marie doesn't know that. Because she doesn't ask. And apparently she doesn't care either.

'Look, I'm sorry I left you alone, okay?' But she doesn't mean it, she just says it because she thinks it's what I want to hear. And it is what I wanted to hear, but it doesn't help anything. 'But there are other people you can hang out with, you know.'

'O yeah, sure, I will just hang with Sheila and Stacy.'

'Kat, please, I don't want to fight. Can we now just forget about it?'

'I don't want to forget about it.' I tell her. 'I thought you were my best friend, but you only care about hanging out with Carter. You only talk about him, in the past week you haven't asked me once how I was doing.'

'Look, like I said, I'm sorry. But Carter is my boyfriend. And I really like him. I think I might even love him. He's a big part of my life but so are you. I didn't mean to abandon you. I just wanted to hang out with him.' If she says she will stop hanging out with him so much and hang out with me more, I'll forgive her, I tell myself. 'You can come along next time?'

Okay, that's a no. I snort. 'I don't want to come along.' I say and I'm suddenly just done with this conversation. 'I'll see you around, Marie.' I tell her and walk past her into my house.

Nobody is home and the house feels empty and weird. It feels wrong. I take out my phone and before I realize what I'm doing, I have found Aaron's number and hit the call button. He's not picking up and I figure he probably has hockey practice. I think about texting him, but I don't know what to say so I decide to try again later and turn on the tv instead, but I can't focus on the show that's playing.

After dinner Aaron calls me back. 'Hey, I saw you called. What's up?'

'I think I really messed up.' I tell him what happened with Marie earlier today. Aaron is silent for a second.

'I think you did the right thing.' He finally says. 'You told her how you felt. And she might not see it now, but eventually see that she's the one in the wrong and that you're not whining.'

'But what if I am whining?' I ask him. 'What if I am blowing this up?'

'You're not.' Aaron reassures me. 'And you will be fine, Marie will eventually come around.'

'Okay.' I say, feeling more calm now. 'It will be fine.' I repeat.

'Hey, tomorrow Isaac, David and Tyler are coming to my place. Do you like GTA V?' Aaron asks.