“No, I’m fine. Just a long week I guess. I haven’t been sleeping well, but I’m not sure why,” I answered, mixing the lies with some truth to ease my conscious.
I didn’t keep anything from Chloe. So, doing so now bothered me, just didn’t sit right. I felt as if I was betraying her, being a bad friend by making the conscious choice to deal with the event and my now questionable sanity alone.
“Okay,” she shrugged. “But, you know I’m here for you, at any hour, if you need to talk. Wouldn’t be the first time you’ve called at three in the morning.”
The guilt weighed me down, sat like a lead balloon in my stomach. I didn’t believe in mere coincidences. The universe had surely just sent me a few not so subtle signs there. I’d have gone with the urge to gulp down my drink if I’d not worried about throwing it up right after. That had been Chloe’s way of telling me I could call her later if I wasn’t sharing due to Sarah being here. Yet, it still felt like she’d accused me of not calling her at three last Saturday morning when I’d needed to. She couldn’t know anything. I’d only talked to her once this week to answer her numerous messages about coming out tonight.
“Maybe I am coming down with something,” I decided to create a confession, one a play on words would make the truth.
I couldn’t be responsible for how she interpreted the words. Truth of the matter stood, I’d been coming down with a bad case of insanity all week, but she’d think I’d meant the flu.
“So that’s why you weren’t picking up your phone or returning calls this week? I mean, you said you were busy and then had your nose stuck in a book, which I believe by the way, since it wouldn’t be the first time, but you know I worry.”
“Yes, I know you do,” I agreed, swallowing my sudden exasperation with this conversation. “Honestly, a new book has me hooked. While horror has never bothered me before, maybe there is a first time for everything. Honestly, I had so many nightmares this week, and then had trouble falling back to sleep after each of them.”
“Were the dreams about what was happening in the book?” Sarah asked.
“Um, mostly, I guess,” I stumbled, caught off kilter by her interruption into the conversation I’d been filling with lies as easily as I created stories.
Stories had been my one secret from Chloe over the years. I didn’t tell anyone, not even my best friend, that I wrote. She’d have insisted on reading them for one, and then good or bad, would say something nice about them. It had been my justification for the deception all these years, along with the fact that I’d forced myself to believe that no one needed to know everything about you. There, I’d just justified my current deception, as well. I could finally take a sip of my drink and try to swallow down the lump in my throat.
“Then stop reading the stupid book,” Chloe exclaimed. “While I’m not a reader like you, I can’t imagine any book being that good that you need to finish it despite what it is doing to your health and well-being. Of course, unlike you, I’m a scared-y cat, so I’d never attempt to read a horror anything!”
I scoffed inside my head, Yeah, I’m so brave!
“We drink without concern for our health,” I countered, channeling some of that angst into a change of topic. “We also eat too much fried food, and…”
“Okay, I get it,” Chloe laughed with both of her hands up, as if she could physically stop me.
“Do you? Or do you need more analogies? Because the only time you’ve ever read a book was to appease me after I’d gone on and on about it,” I accused.
“All right, you got me there,” Chloe surrendered.
“So, back to this any cute guys thing,” Sarah interrupted. “See any around?”
“Honestly, not yet,” I laughed, my first true one in a week.
Muscles I didn’t know I had ached in thanks for the rush of relaxation. I should’ve probably apologized for leaving Sarah out of the original conversation. I hated when I felt the odd man out with a group of girls. Only with Chloe did I not encounter that situation. Still, I hadn’t been the one who had started in on the topic of me.