I glanced toward the table and saw a bottle of sleeping pills. That’s when I realized what had happened—he’d misunderstood. The photo I meant to send to my best friend must have somehow ended up on Asher’s phone.
After my parents’ death, I’d struggled with mild depression and sometimes needed sleeping pills to make it through the night. He knew that. And seeing the pills now, he must’ve jumped to conclusions, thinking I was about to take my own life.
As I looked at his face, still marked with traces of fear, a memory flashed in my mind—of the time, just a month ago, when he had vanished. He left without a word, no phone number, no message, and was unreachable for half a month.
I searched everywhere for him, calling relentlessly, but all I got was the cold, unfeeling sound of a busy tone. Desperate, I went to his company, only to be stonewalled by his secretary: "His whereabouts are confidential, no comment."
For half a month, I faced the suffocating darkness of the night alone, haunted by nightmares and growing thinner with each passing day. When he finally returned, all he said was that it had been a joke—an offhand remark that shattered me.