Not all at once, but slowly and surely. Sometimes he seemed normal, sometimes we’d talk for hours and fall into that same easy friendship that’d always existed between us. He never did make it out to see me in Pittsburgh, but I did fly home one weekend, and we spent the entire time tangled in his sheets, save for the one lunch with Mom and Wayne and the dinner with Jenna. And when I got back home, we made tentative plans for him to come see me next, when things slowed down at work. One night, we sat up a movie on each of our screens and hit play at the same time, being as together as we could be through video chat while it played. And those were the good times. But mostly, Jamie was absent — thinking to himself even if he was on the phone with me. I knew it was killing him to not have me the way he wanted. It felt like rejection to him, I can see that clearly now, but I was selfish back then and I didn’t see a damn thing — maybe I didn’t want to see it. Eventually, the calls and texts became fewer and fewer, and I guess I kind of knew that would happen.
