Page 2 of Licks

We’d been friends back then, Kayla and me. At least I thought we’d been. You drag him down, she’d told me. You’re too needy. He pities you.

Her words had hit their mark, feeding my insecurity. Fear of being a charity case had caused me to curl in on myself. Since I didn’t do things half-assed, I shoved August away with the quietest silent treatment known to man…and Kayla, my supposed friend, gave him all the noise I’d sucked from his world.

She was still on his profile page. Still his girlfriend. I snarled at her picture filling my computer screen and grabbed my phone before my Jäger courage wore off.

Heart pounding in my throat, I pulled up August’s name and rushed off a text. My fingers trembled as I typed, I’m sorry.

Who is this?

His quick reply almost had me launching my cell. My pulse went haywire, my hands too shaky to reply. But this was good. This was right. Of course he replied promptly. He wore the T-shirt! Fate was finally on our side.

Although he’d only been ten minutes away the past year, studying at SFSU while I killed myself cracking the books at San Francisco’s City College, he’d felt so far. Not tonight. Not now.

I took a breath, then two more. I blinked away my Jäger fog and steadied my hands. Hardy har har, I wrote.

No. Seriously, August replied just as quickly. The only Gwen I know hasn’t spoken to me in a year and a half.

His words were a knife in my chest, and the same wave of remorse I’d battled since I’d cut August from my life crashed over me. This wasn’t the time to cower, though, the way I had the past year. This was the time to take charge of my life, beginning with an apology.

My thumbs went to work. I’m sorry I was a bitch our last year of high school.

Which time?

That knife twisted deeper.

Every time. All the time.

God, I wished high school had been the raging party promised in classic eighties movies. Instead it had consisted of me sinking into a jealous despair as I’d battled my mother’s dictatorship and had struggled to get into college. I’d worked two jobs. Student loan applications had dogged me. All the while, my neighbor and best friend had coasted through life, then and now.

August’s mother loved him. He had a father he actually knew and siblings to bond with, including an identical twin who had his back. Grades came easy to him. His soccer scholarship meant paying for college wasn’t a stress. He played a mean guitar and had a crowd of hangers-on—friends who fed on his cool factor like pilot fish catching scraps from a powerful shark.

August had always had everything. I’d had nothing in high school but him.

Now I didn’t even have that.

You ignored me, he shot back. Stopped returning my calls and texts.

Infection set into my festering wound.

I know. I’m the worst person.

Not good enough. You don’t get off with a weak apology. What you did fucking hurt.

A heart transplant would be needed now. Or a heart amputation. Was that even a thing? Could a person live without her heart? Remorse fisted my rotting organ.

I knew I’d hurt August—I’d destroyed myself in the process—but hearing it firsthand had the burn in my eyes turning liquid.

He deserved some answers. I was jealous. Your life kept getting better, and mine got harder. I felt like I was slipping into your shadow. I was resentful.

What kind of bullshit is that? I never treated you as less. You were the most important person in my life, and you walked away like I meant nothing.

A tear leaked out, but I dashed it away. I wasn’t a crier. I never let my emotions overrun me. Unless August was involved. He was also right: my actions may have made sense back then, but they had been a load of bullshit. The notion of dragging him down with my depressing life and crappy situation had seemed worse than shutting him out. It had been the wrong choice.

But it wasn’t why I’d kept those invisible bricks stacked between us.

My fingers moved before I could stop them, before I could take a breath and collect myself and decide on the smart thing to say.

It was also because you started dating Kayla.