Slowly Freaking Out

21- I Really Can't Say No

“Logan, you need to go to sleep,” Miles tells me when I walk into his room at about nine in the morning.

“I can’t,” I sigh. “Mae is just waking up and she’s still being all mopey about Landon.”

“Well, Mae needs to get over it,” He says apathetically. “I know that sounds very insensitive but she’s been at this for about a week and all she’s done is snap at you and avoid you but her bad mood is wearing you down too. Just let her figure it out on her own.”

“That does sound very insensitive,” I agree with a nod. “And I can’t just let her be upset. I’m her best friend.”

“Well, she sure as hell isn’t acting like it,” He reminds me, referring to all of the times in the past week that Mae has snapped at me when I was trying to help her or she’ll just leave the room altogether. It did suck but I mean, she was going through her first real relationship fight, so I tried to be as understanding as I possibly could.

However, I’m sure Miles can tell how exhausted I am right now because on top of balancing Moody Mae, I’ve also been going back and forth with my parents, who think that they want me to come back home early so that I can have a say in the divorce, as if I’m a part of it too. They claim that I am, considering I’m their daughter and all, but I’m adamant about staying as far away from that mess as possible, so I’ve told them that I’m not coming back until the papers are signed or until the end of the summer, like planned. They’ve been stressing me out lately though, and it’s just adding to my exhaustion.

“She’s just having a hard time,” I tell Miles with a small eye roll.

“That doesn’t mean that you should start depriving yourself of sleep. How late did you stay up last night?” He interrogates me with raised eyebrows.

With a long yawn, I sit down on the edge of his bed and shrug. “I don’t know, maybe like four or five. It’s just this thing with Mae and my parents are being relatively bitchy lately but it’s fine. I’m okay.”

“Just lay down for a little while, alright?” He asks me with a pleading look. “You’re so worried about Mae that it’s got me worried about you. So how about I go lock the door to your room and then I’ll lock the door to my room and we’ll just lay down for a while and Mae won’t even know that you’re not in your room.”

Before I have time to protest, Miles is already out the door, going into my room to lock the door in there so that Mae can’t get into my room to see that I’m not in there and then he comes back in and locks his own door so that she can’t come in here to see that I’m actually laying with her brother. I would feel bad for doing this- for letting my best friend struggle with her emotions herself while I’m secretly (innocently) sleeping with her brother but I’m just too tired to feel guilty about it. This whole week, whenever I’m with Miles, I just feel so guilty because I’ve been wanting to wait until after Mae works things out with Landon to tell her about me and Miles but that’s not happening as fast as I’d thought it would have.

Personally, I think Mae is kind of overreacting about the whole thing but obviously, I’m not going to tell her that. I just think that she just wears her heart on her sleeve and him calling her a bitch really ticked her off but that’s kind of all that he did. It’s surely not something to warrant a week-long fight. Maybe shunning him for a weekend or something, but not this. She’s been sitting around like a lump on the side of a log, eating ice cream and watching sad movies on Netflix and ignoring all of her friends all week just because Landon called her a mean name. Maybe I just have thicker skin than she does but I just don’t get it.

When Miles locks his door, he comes back over to the bed and I lay down under his warm covers before he lays down beside me, wrapping his arms around my midsection so that we’re spooning, Miles being the big spoon.