My Imaginary Ex (COMPLETE)

Chapter 10

Setting up a dinner date with a newly engaged Zack was harder than it used to be.

Then again, I never did the inviting before, so I didn't know how he'd respond to my sudden invitation.

"Sorry, busy," he kept saying, over and over again. If it wasn't a work thing, it was a wedding-related thing like a fitting, or a meeting with the caterers. I tried skipping the text message and giving him a call, but it was rejected, with an apologetic text quickly following: "Sorry in meeting."

The date of his wedding neared and I started to panic. Or rather, I alternated between sleepless panicking and exhausted resignation.

"It's no use," I told Lena over the phone, after my third day of trying to get Zack to meet me. For three days, I had been ready to leave work and go straight to dinner with him, but so far no go. "He's busy."

"He's avoiding you!" Lena's shrill voice was almost too loud. "You can't give up!"

"Send me Marjorie's number," I said.

Marjorie, it turned out, didn't know where he was either. She was on a different floor and didn't see him on a daily basis, but she could find out if she really had to. As I waited for her update, I pretended to work and felt resignation creep in again.

This was silly. Maybe Zack didn't need me to save him. Why would he? He never said anything, never gave any indication that he was unhappy.

Except for those times when I suspected there was something he wasn't telling me.

But why not tell me? Why keep it to himself?

Maybe it was best that this never happened.

Zack and I had been friends for a long time. Why change it now? How was I even going to start talking to him about all of this?

"I found out where he is. Be at lobby of the Summit building in ten minutes!" was Marjorie's text message to me five minutes later.

I got there in eight; it was only a few blocks away. The row of elevators was bringing people to the lobby in batches, and all of them brushed past me, the girl who didn't seem to be in a rush to go anywhere.

Zack emerged from one of the elevators a few minutes later. Not what I expected. I thought he had been in a client meeting, but he was wearing jeans and a plain white shirt, a duffel bag was slung over his shoulder, and his hair was damp.

He came from the gym. When did Zack start going to a gym?

My mind flashed back to Zack in college, how he looked after a basketball game with his friends. Sometimes he'd offer to drive me home but I had to wait for their game to end, and he always met me fresh from a shower. Of course he was going to the gym. That explained why his shirts fit a little better, the muscle definition in his arms...

"Zack!" I called, almost letting him get away.

"Jas," he said, and the way he said my name, letting the "s" run a little long, as he always did, made a nervous thrill run up my neck. "Hi. Why are you here?"

"I met a friend over there," I lied, pointing to the restaurant in the lobby. "And I just got out. Since when do you go to the gym?"

He brought a hand up to his hair self-consciously. "A few months now. It's fun. Really clears my head."

Another batch of people from the elevator started to walk around us, rushing to get out of the building. Zack looked like he was halfway out the door himself, but was probably waiting for me to say something.

"Are you finally free for dinner tonight?" I blurted out.

"But you already had dinner."

"Um, no that was... I just had coffee."