I Wish You The Best

3 - Delilah

"Ok ok, breathe. I'm going to need you to breathe Del. And tell me everything."

Clara tried to calm me down on the phone, forcing me to take a minute. But it seemed almost impossible as I stripped from my red dress and paced my childhood room in nothing but my underwear.

"Mason is back. He's here." I wince at the way it sounds coming out from between my lips.

He looked so good. So fucking good. I almost forgot how tall he was but was instantly reminded when he stepped out of that bar looking like a deer caught in headlights. His dark wash jeans clung to his muscular yet lean thighs and he wore a long sleeve shirt that was begging for mercy as it stuck to his arms. Arms that had been around me at one point. Arms that I knew all too well how comforting and reassuring arms could be.

"EARTH TO DELILAH!" The scream of my friend, still on the phone, tears me away from my very detailed encounter with a certain pro football star. "I'm here," I said.

My cat, Anakin, who I named after just finishing my binge-watch of the prequels, brushed up against my bare leg, begging for attention. I scooped him up in all his brown tabby cat glory and brought him up to my bed where he remained the only man I needed.

Slipping on a large oversized shirt, an old one of my dad's, I took a seat on the edge of my bed and filled Clara in on everything.

She was quiet by the end of the conversation, her mind probably just as blank as mine right now.

"Well, did he look happy to see you? Sad? Mad?" She ponders. I think back to his reaction to finally seeing my face and it tears at my soul. It was nothing but shock and admiration, one of which he used to look at me with, day in and day out.

"He looked at me like I killed his puppy, Clara," I confess. She laughs at my obvious over-exaggeration. "I highly doubt it. I bet he just looked at you like his ex-girlfriend showed up at the same bar as him. Oh wait...that's exactly what happened." Her sarcastic reply had me rolling my eyes.

"Very funny. But seriously, I think I'm going to need some serious girls' nights for the next few weeks to recover from that." There is nothing more that I want than to forget that what just happened, did happen.

It doesn't stop me from pulling up Instagram and typing Mason Jones in the search bar. Neither does it stop me from cursing myself as I lay eyes on his profile.

I still see hints of the boy I fell in love with all those years ago, but they're stuffed in with everything that makes him the man he is now. In most of his pictures he looks sad or moody, never really smiling. He's got plenty of posts up with his teammates and even more with that friend from the bar, Darius I realize, from a tagged photo. He's built the life he always wished to live. I find myself smiling, a sad smile knowing he did it all like he said he would, just not together.

"Listen, Del, people fall apart. What you guys had was epic. But you were both young and foolishly in love. Don't beat yourself up over the past, okay?" Clara has always been my voice of reason and I love her for that.

"You're right." I exit the app, leaving the follow button blue and not hitting follow back.

I remember the day I unfollowed him from everything like it was yesterday. We agreed to keep it civil and even still be friends, but it got harder to pretend to myself. Seeing him out in other cities with new friends and new girls was just too hard to bear.

"I'm always right. Now let me get my shit together and let Ryan know I'm ditching her for you." Clara and Ryan had been living together now for almost a year and had been together even longer. They both met during their senior year of university at a Jazz show that they both needed to go to for class credit. Neither of them knew a thing about Jazz or each other but by the end of the night, they were already halfway in love as Clara says.