The Science of Growing Apart

31- Four Words

I didn't read the letter until the next morning, because it took me a long time to mentally prepare for whatever it said. I meant to call Casey at my lunch hour to talk about it, even though I had no idea what to say, but I got put on an attempted murder case that had a tough deadline, and then I had to be at court for a really boring hearing, so I was running around all day without even enough time to eat a snack, let alone put any thoughts together to string into a sentence to give to Casey about the letter.

I was so busy with work that I had almost forgotten about the letter completely until my phone started to ring at eight pm as I was furiously typing away at my laptop, Tulip sleeping on the desk beside me.

I paused my typing, staring down at the phone screen, wondering what the hell I should do. If I ignored it, it might give him the wrong impression that the letter upset me, when it did the exact opposite. I wasn't upset, I was flabberghasted and a little pissed off at my teenage self for never making the move.

"Hi, Casey," I eventually answered the call, leaning back in my chair and tucking my socked feet onto the seat with me so that I could rest my chin on my knees.

"Josie, thank god." He sounded so relieved. "Did you read the letter? I thought you'd call after you read it, but I haven't heard from you all day so I've been worried that maybe it freaked you out."

"Sorry," I apologized quickly. "I read it this morning, but I've been so busy with work today, it's been insane. I was planning on calling."

"Oh, okay. Good," he sighed, sounding a lot less frazzled now.

"We were really dumb teenagers."

"Yeah," he agreed with a laugh. "We were. Especially me."

"Why didn't you actually give me the letter?" I asked him curiously.

"You showed up with Wes and you looked so happy together. He seemed like a nice guy, so I just kept it to myself," he said. "And I was so upset that the next week, I asked Rebecca on our first date. So after I started dating her, it would have obviously been inappropriate to send it and I knew that if I even reached out on a friendly basis, those feelings would come back."

"I get why you didn't, but you should have given it to me anyway," I told him, thinking back to the wedding when I was dating Wes. I was still in love with Casey, though I never would have admitted that, so I draped myself all over my boyfriend in an attempt to look and feel okay. Seeing Casey again after getting ghosted was probably one of the most painful situations I'd ever been in, so I just focused on talking to Wes and avoiding Casey at all cost. "I would have left him for you. Which is terrible to say, but, well. I would have."

"I wish I would have, and also I wish that I punched him in the face after the reception," he told me with a nervous laugh. "Maybe things would be different now."

"Yeah, I'd probably think you were kind of an asshole for punching somebody who hadn't done anything wrong yet," I reminded him with a laugh of my own before I paused and said, "Actually, I think it would be really hot to see you punch somebody, so maybe it would have worked."

"Really?" he sounded surprised, but also very amused. "So lab coats and physical violence really do it for you, Josie?"

"I hate you," I said quickly at the mention of the violently embarrassing encounter from Saturday night. It still made my entire body cringe, as if rejecting the memory as reality.

"Sorry. I couldn't resist," he responded sheepishly. "On that topic though, I do have a more serious question."

"A serious question about you being hot?"

"Yes? Kind of." I could tell that he was getting nervous again, maybe feeling shy about asking whatever question he wanted to ask. "I'm just curious, and you can be totally honest, were you really attracted to me in high school? Like, physically, I mean?"