Honesty by Seth King

Author:Seth King [King, Seth]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Published: 2016-02-29T05:00:00+00:00

Hey.

The text came while I was watching some home decorating show and trying to follow some Pinterest roast beef recipe. The mixture in the pot looked more like a pile of horse turds, though, and I was halfway to giving up. Looking down at my phone and seeing his name on the screen felt like drinking water after a week in the Sahara. It felt like validation.

It also made me see the homeless woman’s eyes, two little haunted houses inside a human skull…

Hi, I said, but then I deleted it. What did I say? That I didn’t know how to live without him anymore? That my world had stopped happening? This hadn’t felt like a breakup. This had felt like someone taking away all my oxygen and then telling me to sing the national anthem. I did not want to live without this boy’s music in the air.

So I called him. He didn’t answer. I called again, and he picked up on the fifth (!) ring.

“Hiii,” he said, and his voice was smiling. “Hi, Coley. Sorry, I got tangled up in my mom’s worthless little dog’s leash and couldn’t answer.”

I stared at my ceiling. What was I doing, besides pressing my finger on a hot stove and expecting not to be burned? “Hi. Where have you been?”

“Oh, you know, sorry. I’ve always been a bad texter.”

What a load of shit, I thought. People who said “I’m not good at texting” might as well have just announced “I’m an asshole who saw your text and chose to ignore it” and saved everyone the charade. He just didn’t want to talk to me.

“Whatever. So…how goes it?” I asked him.

“Um, it’s going. You?”

“Oh, I’m spectacular.” Silence filled the space on the line. “So are we going to talk about things?”

“What things?”

I didn’t respond. He knew.

“…Yeah?” he asked, still playing dumb.

“Maybe about you leaving my house? Or ditching me? Or publicly ignoring me?”

“Hold on,” he said, his tone lower.

“What?”

“I need to find some privacy.”

I heard some shuffling around, then a door slamming. The background air seemed to close in, like he was in a closet or something. “My mom is visiting again. I can’t hangout this second.”

I felt smaller somehow, younger, and old at the same time. “Okay…okay. I guess we can hang out some other time. There’s this dinner delivery app I wanted to try out tonight, anyway, and that show on Netflix I’ve been neglecting…”

“Coley Furman, are you crazy, or just stupid? We’re hanging out as soon as she leaves. Why did you think I texted you?”

“Um, I don’t know,” I said. “Why did you?”

He hesitated, but only for a moment. “Because my lungs won’t work without you anymore, Coley. This has been the worst week of my life. I missed you, and I never want to miss you like that again. No matter what I do, I just can’t leave this thing alone.”

“Why not?”

He sighed. “I don’t know. But whenever I close my eyes and picture what I want from this life…well, lately all I see is you.

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