Unapologetically, Juliet

Chapter Twenty-One

HE never called me the next day.

At first, I thought it was because he'd gone out with his SAR team, or he'd worked late or something. But he didn't call me the next day either. Or the next. Nor did he answer any of my texts. I thought about being that crazy girl again and randomly showing up at his house, but without Trixi and Shel around, there was no way I was brave enough to take that step.

It wouldn't have actually been that big of a deal to me, except that we'd just kissed, and it seemed like everything had gone well. I just didn't understand why he went radio silent all of a sudden. Did I do something wrong? Was everything okay with him?

For almost five days I was going insane trying to figure out what had happened between the time we kissed and the next day when he stopped contacting me altogether. But then, out of nowhere I got a text from him. It came through right before I was supposed to leave work around four thirty on Friday. I refused to even look at it until I got home later that night. No matter what it said, I wanted to be alone when I read it.

Which turned out to be for the best.

Juliet, we can't be friends or whatever we were, anymore. Saber.

That was it. Nine words full of both finality and uncertainty. With absolutely no explanation.

What? Why? What's wrong? I sent the text after I'd read it over twenty times to make sure it sounded appropriate. But he never responded.

He even stopped going to cooking class. When I asked Chef Rocco if he'd heard from Saber, he only said that he'd switched classes. I felt like I'd been thrown into a pool of sharks all on my own, classes were almost unbearable without him, but I kept going anyway.

It was weird having someone in my life one day and then they were completely gone the next, but without any sort of closure. The worst part of it was that I had absolutely no one to talk to about it. My dad was still out flying airplanes, Trixi and Shel were still immersed in work, and there really wasn't anyone else I confided in.

As embarrassing as it was, I cried myself to sleep four nights in a row. But that was the only time I let myself think too much about Saber or my family or anything else that was shitty. When I woke up every morning, I plastered a smile on my face, and I went to work and I stayed completely focused on getting whatever hefty donations I could get. I almost doubled what I'd brought in the last three months combined.

Sarah was so impressed that she gave me the whole week before Thanksgiving off. I almost argued with her about it, but I didn't want to seem weird or ungrateful, so instead, I smiled and joked around for a while before she finally told me to go home.

After that, I put everything I had into cooking the best Thanksgiving feast I possibly could. I took everything I learned in class and applied it to whatever I did in the kitchen. I probably went a little overboard, really, because I had to make every dish absolutely perfect.

When Thanksgiving day finally rolled around, I'd stayed up almost all night, baking the turkey to perfection. I'd cooked a few things the day before, like a couple pies and casseroles that I thought my mom would've been impressed by, while everything else, I made that day. I was in the kitchen basically from the moment I woke up. I even made Howie come up and test a few things while he put on his latest movie for me to watch while I worked.

"What about the gore? Does it all look real?" He quizzed me on every part of the movie he was nervous about, and I answered as honestly as possible.

"Yeah. Definitely. I think I saw one of the boom mics, but other than that, I didn't see anything else that looked amateur." My response brightened his entire mood.