Golden Because We're Alive

The phone rang twice before I even considered hanging up. If I was going to do this, I had to keep from chickening out. Guilt ate at me as I thought about what I was doing. Adam was great to me, but a girl couldn’t rely on him forever. I took the phone and waited for it to go to voicemail. If it did that, I could ignore it and never deal with his number again.

“Hello?” answered a voice. “Who is this?”

I almost dropped the phone when he answered. At least, I figured it was Tyler. Rachel would have been laughing at me. Adam would have been mad just because it was guy on the phone with me. I highly doubted that he even remembered giving me his phone number several days before once I focused on who was on the phone with me.

“Hi, Tyler? This is Emily McMurphy,” I told him. “The girl from the signing.”

“Oh, right! I expected you to call sooner. Um, what’s up?”

He expected me to call? Only a handful of people expected me to call before. I wondered if he was just saying that.

“Nothing. I just called because, well, you gave me your number,” I said.

Tyler laughed slightly. This was awkward. Maybe I shouldn’t have called. Maybe he didn’t even remember who I was and was just acting like he did to not hurt my feelings. That could have been likely. In between the time we met and now, Tyler probably met plenty of people therefore forgetting all about me. I responded to that thought the only way I could figure: hanging up.

I moved a pillow to cover the phone so I wouldn’t see it. The song “Black and Yellow” started playing muffled from beneath the pillow. Kicking the pillow away, I saw that it was Tyler’s number. I grabbed the phone and answered it.

“Did you hang up on me?” he asked as soon as I said hello.

“No. I, uh, dropped my phone,” I lied. He didn’t know that it was a lie. I dropped my phone all the time, but lying about it was new.

He sighed at my lame excuse, but he didn’t call me out on it. Tyler and I sat on the phone in silence. I resisted the urge to hang up on him out of nervousness. He cleared his throat then started to mumble something. I imagined him sitting there with the phone in one hand and the other hand running through his hair or pulling on one of his ears.

“What?” I asked him.

“Our game tomorrow. Do you want to grab lunch beforehand with me?” he aske more clearly. “I can pick you up then take you home afterwards.”

“Sure,” I told him. I gave him my address for our plans then said my goodbyes.

I couldn’t believe that all just happened. My mind went straight to Adam. He didn’t know and probably should. I called him and waited for him to answer. I tapped my foot and pushed my pillows around on my bed.

“Em! I was just thinking about you,” he answered.

“Hey, can I cancel our lunch plans? I’m meeting Rachel for lunch for some girl time,” I told him. The second lie I had told in less than an hour had just passed my lips.

“Yeah, sure. I’ll still see you at the game, right?”

“Of course. I love you. Bye.”

“Love you, too.”

Before he hung up, I thought I heard a girl’s voice in the background. It was just my imagination. Or I hoped it was. Why would he have another girl with him? He wasn’t the cheating type. Our time together had made me believe he was a good guy.

I sat on my bed and turned on Easy A. Brew jumped up on my bed with me, and I rubbed the dog’s stomach while he lay next to me. We watched the movie. I texted Rachel asking her to lie about my plans for me since I had made the smart decision to drag her into it.

Rachel called me as soon as I guess she got the text message. She must have been curious as to why I was lying. I had nothing to tell her, but I knew that she could figure it out. The girl was smart, and I knew that she deserved to know why she was lying for me. Answering the phone became my important duty in the sake of friendship.

“You called him. Didn’t you?” asked Rachel. I laughed that she could figure it out. She did happen to be a smart girl, and I was sure there was something about my texts that tipped her off.

“Tyler asked me to lunch, Rach. I was not going to pass that up,” I explained to her. This was the girl who knew me better than anyone, and I knew she could understand where I was coming from with that.

Rachel lectured me about the cheating ways that I could fall into, but she also reminded me of the times where she had accused Adam of cheating in the past like when his cousins had been visiting. I knew that there was something odd about that situation. My friend didn’t know about the girl from the phone. I was worried that there was something really going on. Was I just feeding into this?

“Do you think that I should trust Adam?” I asked her.

“What?” she answered.

“Nothing. Forget it. I’ll talk to you later,” I said.

“Yeah, sure. Bye, Em,” my best friend said before hanging up the phone. I sighed putting the phone on my nightstand.

My night hadn’t been great, and it seemed as though it was just getting worse. Perhaps if I could find a way to make it all just end. I fell asleep thinking about the three phone conversations I had been involved in that night. Sleep didn’t come easy when one has a mind that goes a hundred miles per hour even at eleven o’clock.

I woke up the next morning to get dressed when I realized that it was about eleven. Practice was over soon, and I could feel my stomach drop as I thought about Tyler coming over. Mr. Seguin was someone my family adored. Ever since round 3 of the playoffs last year, my mom had said that she loved him. We were a Bruins family, and I had been waiting for that.

A knock at the door came while I dried my hair after a shower. My mom, being as loud as she is, shouted for me to come downstairs. I laughed at her then yelled back that I was getting ready. I knew who it was supposed to be at the door, but it was a surprise when I walked downstairs to a guest that I hadn’t been expecting to show up at all.