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“You work out your demons your own way,” is what he did not reply to her most recent text, from out the blue, this after, long ago, she assured him if he needed anything she was there for him. He had suspected this was hogwash. She was doing this for herself somehow. To expiate some guilt from some other time perhaps another lifetime. Whatever, who cares. She’s trying to use him to rid herself of her demons. He is acutely aware of this and he wonders if she is oblivious. Operating on automatic. So he rejects her offers of comfort.

One reason he knew this was hogwash was after one of the two times when he had leaned on her and asked for help she became annoyed with him, and tough. Exactly contrary to what she had promised him. For example, the night he broke a shoe almost exactly outside her home. And sure it was the middle of the night, but she’s a night owl and she’s his friend right? He knocked at her door and asked for a spare shoe or a ride home. Her response was anger. How dare he and his presumptions just drop on in whenever he felt.

She did not offer to get him home, she did not care he would have to walk two miles barefoot seeing as he’d also lost his wallet and his phone. She stamped and remained indignant at this intrusion, his audacity. She did not behave like the friend who’d offered, more than once, ‘I’m always here for you.’

Twice he sought her assistance and each time the same response. Malicious indifference. Now he could never trust her again and he let go.

Eventually she texted, ‘Hope ur well.’
‘Do you need something?’ he replied.
‘Thinking of u,’ she wrote. 
He’d wasted Xanax on her? He berated himself. He’d been so wrong, he was fumbling while he texted, ‘I was thinking you should lose my number.’

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