Ghosted by Linda Niehoff

Author:Linda Niehoff
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dread Moon Press

Caitlin didn’t say anything three weeks before when I told her.

After the darkness, after the heaviness of no words pushing through the night, through the dark like ripples in a night pond, after I waited, she said nothing.

Except, “Gabe.”

That one word.

One syllable.

It came out on a breath, an exhale. I never wanted to hear my name said like that, especially from her. And so I hung up the phone. And unplugged it so she couldn’t call back.

I guess that’s why I used the word “almost.” But really, we weren’t even that. We were a me that was alone on a dark hardwood floor shivering, and a her. One road going straight. The other road curving away.

What had I done?

She was my best friend. Sure there was Oscar and Dom and Kev. “The Boys,” we called ourselves. But Caitlin. She was the one I always called. If I liked a girl, if I flunked a test, if I was in trouble. She was the first one. The boys were for skateboarding and movies and driving country roads with the music turned up. The ones who tackled each other and raced each other. If I’d gone through a breakup, they moved me into a headlock, mussed up my hair, and said, “Let’s get this boy out,” and took me out of town. Built a campfire we could howl around. Throw rocks at until late.

But Caitlin. She was that soft voice in the dark that said, “Gabe. How are you? How are you really?” And when I couldn’t say, she put words to it for me. She’d tell it in such a way that I felt understood. She’d tell the story of me.

And now I’d ruined it. There are things you can’t go back from. You can’t put words back into the dark once they’ve come out. And you can’t turn after you’ve gone straight.

I’d spent three weeks not talking to her. Not calling her back. Not even when she’d left a note on my windshield: “Gabe.” (I could still hear the way she’d said it. An exhale. Pushing it out and away from her.) “We really need to talk.”

Last thing she ever said to me.

And then she went straight when she should have turned.

Me? I should’ve kept going straight, too.

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