Yes, I Am

Chapter Eighteen.

April, 2016.

"Caleb, is something wrong?" I asked. I was sick of the awkward pauses and silly excuses and circling around each other, only to pretend in the end like everything was fine. Well, I was done pretending. It was time to address the elephant in the room. The only time we had a real conversation was at night. When the rest of the world was sleeping, he found the face to be normal with me, and now that it was day again, his doppelganger was back. I couldn't understand what had gone wrong, why there was suddenly an ocean between us. What had I done to push him away now?

"Nothing. Why?" he chuckled nervously.

"Oh, I don't know. Off the top of my head, and I'm just throwing a wild guess here, how about the fact that you're avoiding me?" I said with biting sarcasm. I could practically hear him flinch.

"I'm not avoiding you, Matthew. I've been busy," he insisted like he always did.

"That might be a part of the reason but that's not it. It's been two weeks since I've seen you, Caleb. Two fucking weeks! We didn't used to go two days without seeing each other and now it's been a fortnight. I don't even know what the hell went wrong. We were completely okay and then we came back from New York and suddenly there's a huge shift in our equation. Are you finally tired of me? Did you meet someone else? Did I do something wrong? Cuz I'm wracking my brain here, Caleb, and I'm coming up completely blank." I was gulping in huge breaths once I was done fuming.

"You're overthinking like you always do. Did something happen that's making you obsessive about this?" he said calmly. Too calmly for my liking. I didn't want calm. I wanted him to scream back and fight with me and sort it out once and for all.

"You happened. Or more accurately, didn't happen," I bit out, glaring at the highlighter pen I'd been twirling in my hand.

"Did something happen?" he asked again in the exact same tone.

I took a deep breath in and let it out. "No. I am not overthinking this. Don't try to turn this around on me."

"Of course you're overthinking this, Matthew. Did you listen to yourself? Where am I gonna find anyone even half as breathtakingly amazing as you? You didn't do anything wrong. I can never be tired of you. And you said it yourself, right?- we were completely fine until we came back from New York. Just because we haven't been able to meet, you're screwing it up in your head."

I considered his words for a moment. He had a way of speaking that made me doubt myself for a minute. But I couldn't have imagined it all, could I? I got obsessive about random shit and built it up in my head, I knew that. But there can't be smoke without fire, right? Why would I imagine a murder if I hadn't seen a gun?

"Forget about that. You hardly talk to me properly. I'm not asking you to justify yourself but if you need space, tell me instead of pushing me away," I said.

"Space is the one thing I don't need between us right now." He sighed deeply but his words sounded hard, a little defensive.

"I miss you," I whispered.

"I miss you too, Matthew," he said softly.

I ran a hand through my hair in frustration. "Listen, I-" I slapped a hand over my mouth before I completed that sentence. "I- I need to go. Talk to you later?"

"Sure. Love you," he said in a small voice and I could hear how my abruptness had hurt him but he didn't say anything about it.

"Love you too," I said hurriedly and cut the phone before something stupid came out of my mouth.

My Uber pulled over and I immediately got into it. Burying my face in my hands, I softly banged my head on the seat in front of me, cursing myself in as many languages as I knew. Even the driver was looking at me with a shocked-cum-fearful expression, unsure whether he should call 911 and report me or throw me out of his cab and report me.