You Don't Have Me

Chapter 2

You sighed, watching your phone as you let it ring. The number of missed calls from Tyler now growing to nine, just in the past week since that night. And as if that didn't sound bad enough, you had triple the amount of text messages and a handful of missed face time calls from him, all of which you were ignoring.

Clearly he couldn't take a hint. Why were boys so clueless?

All of the sudden, the glow of your lock screen lighting up caught your attention as you saw something new.

Tyler Seguin: Voicemail

Right then, it had dawned on you that in the almost eight years that you had been best friends with Tyler, he had never before left you a voicemail. You thumb hovered over the play symbol, as you weighed the pros and cons of what listening to it would mean in your head. The biggest con of all, was that it broke your No-Tyler rule, which you had implemented in order to truly get over him. No talking about him, no thinking about him, and above all no contact with him, wether that be in person or through a screen.

But, man, the thought of hearing his voice just even one more time drove every ounce of doubt lingering in your mind away. With that, your thumb hit the icon on the touchscreen as fast as it possibly could before you could stop yourself.

Hey, uhhh, it's me. I just was wondering if you wanted to do something tonight or tomorrow or whenever...I don't know why you're not answering any of my texts or anything but uhh, ya, well thats it. I'll call ya later, bye.

You looked at your phone with disgust. That's what he had to say, really? He wasted a voicemail on that? Throwing your phone on the other side of the room, you crawled into bed, hoping sleep would be the answer to all of your problems. It wasn't, but it didn't hurt.

The next few days your life seemed to normalize, the amount of times Tyler trying to contact you dwindling. You created a schedule for yourself- you went to work, then you went to the gym, and then you went home. One of the nights you even went out with some of your friends, in an attempt to reignite your social life.

You were finding your routine and it was actually refreshing to not wait up for some inevitable text at 2:00 am, asking you to come over.

It was going great, until you came home one day to find his obnoxious and unnecessarily suped-up Jeep sitting in your driveway, and Tyler sitting on your front steps. While you couldn't completely see because it was tucked into a hat, it looked like his hair had gotten longer, which you thought was impossible since it had only been like a week and a half since the last time you had seen him.

His head perked up as he saw your car ease into the driveway, a small smile appearing on his face. Damn, that smile, it killed you now as it did the first time you had seen it.

You sighed as you collected your bag, taking your time, before opening your car door. Tyler was walking towards you, his hands in his pockets. He looked nervous, which was weird because you had never really seen him nervous before.

"Hey." He said, softly.

"Hi." You said, brushing past him as you walked up to your front door, grabbing the key from your purse and sliding it into the lock, opening the door with ease.

Tyler followed you in, making himself at home. You stopped to take off of your heels and put your purse down on the bench by your front door, while he walked into your kitchen.

"Did you change something in here, it looks different." He said, looking around the room trying to pin point a change in decor

"What do you want, Tyler?" You exhaled, standing in the doorway of the room, just watching him.

"I just wanted to hang out with you, I haven't seen you in a while." He said, opening your refrigerator, grabbing himself a bottle of water. "I miss you." He said, staring down at the ground. His hand clutching the water bottle for dear life.

"Yup." You just slowly nodded your head.

"That's it? That's all you're going to say?"

"Is there something you would like me to say?" You asked, the frustration in your tone growing.

"I just want you to say something!" He practically yelled at you. "Are you mad at me? Are we just not hanging out anymore?" His voice much calmer.

"I don't know, Tyler." Your head shook slowly as you exhaled through the words.

"Like I get that I need to stop relying on you so much, but like does that mean we can't even be friends?" You threw your head up into the air, running your hand through your hair, you didn't even have a chance to speak before he continued. "I don't understand, everything's changing and I feel like you're always mad at me now, but like, I didn't do anything."

"Thats the point." You said under your breath so he wouldn't hear you. "You never did anything."