Chapter 9
TALYA
FOUR YEARS AGO (GRADUATION NIGHT)
Today was meant to be a day to remember.
One I’d been waiting for since I first stepped foot into BU.
I was one step closer to opening my dream plant shop, but beneath the excitement, tonight also carried a quiet dread I hadn’t been able to shake ever since Ezra told me he was moving to France.
In less than twenty-four hours, my best friend—and the boy I’d secretly been in love with ever since I knew what it meant to love someone—would be embarking on a once-in-a-lifetime mentorship opportunity.
While I stayed behind.
I was happy for him. Truly. But I’d be lying if I said it didn’t feel like a part of me would be leaving with him. We’d been inseparable for the last seventeen years and now he’d be 3,437 miles away instead of right across the street.
Ezra’s mom and my parents had decided to celebrate together, and despite my best efforts, I couldn’t find it in me to fake being happy a second longer. Not when my chest felt like it was slowly being wrung out, breath by breath.
So after spending what felt like hours thanking everyone for showing up and indulging my mother with so many pictures and FaceTime calls with our family back in Morocco until my cheeks ached, I’d retreated to the only place where I knew I’d be able to take a breath.
“There you are.”
My body jolted upright, the unexpected smooth voice startling me. I’d been lying on the flat roof just outside of my bedroom window, eyes trained on stars clustered around the full moon.
Clutching my chest, I turned toward the window and found Ezra perched against the ledge of my window, his broad frame filling the space with familiar ease. Moonlight spilled across his face as his gaze landed on me.
“You scared the shit out of me, Ezra,” I managed to say over my frantic heartbeat, which wasn’t just the result of him sneaking up on me.
“I’m sorry,” he said with a chuckle. “To be fair, I did call your name a few times, but you weren’t answering.”
Guess I’d been too lost in my thoughts to hear him.
Ezra climbed through the window and came to sit beside me.
He drew his knees up and rested his forearms across them.
My eyes caught on how his white T-shirt, the one he’d changed into after the ceremony, tugged and bunched up.
On how his muscles flexed from the movement and how his patchwork tattoos seemed to ripple across his skin.
It even exposed a sliver of his back under the hem of his shirt, his olive complexion practically begging to be touched.
Ezra James had this ridiculous ability to make the most mundane things look hot.
He hadn’t done anything and I was drooling at the sight.
I’d lost count of how many times I’d woken up, almost panting, after I’d dreamed of his muscles straining for a much different reason—dreams that had him hovering above me.
God, I was pathetic and a walking fucking cliché.
The girl next door, hopelessly in love with a boy she could never have.
I knew Ezra loved me, in his own way, and sometimes, there were tiny, fleeting moments where it felt like there might be more. But at least I still had enough sense to reel myself back before I drowned in wishful, foolish thinking.
“Shouldn’t you be downstairs celebrating with everyone?” I asked, desperate to distract my thoughts from the dangerous territory they’d ventured to.
“I’d rather be with you.” The stupid smile I loved so much framed his lips and my heart gave a traitorous skip.
Like I said… pathetic.
“Always the charmer,” I muttered, bumping my shoulder into his to hide the blush I could feel spreading across my cheeks.
“Just with you,” he replied smoothly like it was the most natural reply in the world.
There went my heart again.
How was a girl supposed to not hear wedding bells and plan her future with comebacks like that?
I rolled my eyes, but the smile that bloomed on my lips was genuine. Probably the first one from this entire evening.
“Needed to get away before your mom called another one of your aunts to gush how proud she is that her youngest daughter just graduated college?” he teased, changing the subject.
That was another thing I loved about Ezra. I never needed to explain myself. He’d always been able to read exactly what was on my mind.
“Yeah,” I admitted. “I just needed some time alone.”
His expression softened, the teasing slipping away. “Do you want me to leave?” he asked gently, nodding toward the open window behind him.
“Don’t be silly,” I deadpanned. “You know I never need a break from you.”
His cheeks flushed, and I forced myself not to read into it. Instead, I lay back down, ignoring the butterflies fluttering in my stomach that had begun taking flight the moment I saw him perched over the ledge of my window.
Ezra joined me, settling beside me in the same position, so close I could feel the heat radiating off his body.
A shiver danced down my spine despite the oversized hoodie—his hoodie—I was wearing over my dress.
He’d left it behind one night after coming over for dinner and I’d selfishly kept it.
I did that a lot. Collected little pieces of him whenever he left them behind.
At this point, I had enough of his things in my closet to build my own “Ezra James” wardrobe.
He’d never asked for any of it back and I wasn’t going to offer it. I liked wearing his stuff. It didn’t help with my delusion of being his, but I was just a girl. Could you really blame me?
We stayed like that for a while, side by side, both gazing up at the midnight sky in silence. The air filled with everything I wanted to tell him but couldn’t. Too afraid to cross the line and ruin what we had.
“So,” he said softly, his voice cutting through the stillness. “What’s on your mind, Taly-Belly?”
Another butterfly took flight. He’d given me that nickname the day we’d met when we were five and six years old respectively, after I’d introduced myself and he’d thought Talya was too simple. He’d claimed I’d needed a brighter name to match me.
If five-year-old Talya could have grasped the concept of love at that age, that moment would have probably been the catalyst for years of quiet, unrequited love.
I let out a slow breath. “I’m just gonna miss you,” I answered honestly. My unspoken words weighed heavily on the tip of my tongue.
Stay.
Don’t leave me behind.
I love you, Ezra James, and the thought of not being near you every day is killing me.
“I’ll miss you too,” he said, and I could feel the weight of his gaze on me.
I’d expected him to make a joke and lighten the grim atmosphere like he always did. Instead, his tone carried the same strain as mine.
As if leaving me behind tore him up inside as much as it did for me.
“Promise you won’t forget about me?” I asked, finally bringing myself to meet his gaze.
Normally, I’d hate being this vulnerable with someone, but that had never been the case with Ezra. I’d always felt like I could tell him anything and he’d never judge me or make me feel silly for feeling the way I did.
Yet another reason I loved him.
Ezra reached out, slowly tucking a loose strand behind my ear before letting his fingers trail down the side of my face. My skin came alive under his touch, the sensation of his skin over mine halting any oxygen from filtering inside my lungs.
“That would be impossible,” he murmured, his fingers lingering just a moment longer before falling away.
The loss of his touch felt like a jolt back to reality. I cleared my throat and blurted the first thing that came to mind, anything to tamp the reaction my body was having.
“Just don’t break too many hearts,” I teased, or at least I hoped that was what my tone conveyed. But the words tasted bitter the second they left my mouth. Just the thought of Ezra with someone else twisted my stomach into knots.
He scrunched up his nose and averted his gaze. “That’s very unlikely.”
I propped myself on my elbow, turning slightly to face him. “Please,” I scoffed, hoping to hide the green vines of jealousy creeping up my throat. “With a face like yours, you’ll have all the French girls at your feet.”
I’d seen Ezra flirt with people. It was practically ingrained in his personality, which was why I’d always brushed off the moments he flirted with me.
But for someone with his insanely good looks and wonderfully charming personality, he’d never actually had a girlfriend.
At least not that I’d known of. We told each other everything and spent practically every waking second together, so I doubted he’d keep that from me.
Right?
But men were men at the end of the day. Although just thinking that about Ezra felt wrong because I knew how untrue that statement was when it came to him.
He looked up at me, his gaze slow and deliberate. “It would be a little hard when I’m leaving my heart behind with someone else,” he said, his voice low enough that it sank beneath my skin.
Something flared in his gaze, something between longing and desire, but I had to be imagining it. I must have misheard him or made up what he’d just said from all these years of wishful thinking.
My puzzlement must’ve been written all over my face because suddenly, the space between us had all but vanished. His arm brushed against mine, and heat rippled through my entire body.
“Ezra?” His name had come out as a soft plea, tangled between uncertainty and something dangerously close to hope.
Hope I couldn’t afford to let grow roots.
“Yes,” he breathed, his voice simmering to a hush.
We were on the verge of a precipice and the single word seemed to tilt us toward a version of permanent change.
I wasn’t sure if I’d been the one who’d leaned closer or if he had, but our breaths mingled in the infinitesimal space between us.
Over the years, we’d slept in the same beds, cuddled when I was cold, which was almost all the time, shared food, talked for hours on the phone, but we’d never been this close.
I was a breath away from my lips brushing against his when the sound of my sister’s voice sliced through the night.
“Talya! Ezra! Are you guys up here?”
I jerked back like I’d been burned, stumbling away just as my sister’s head popped through the open window. I didn’t dare look at Ezra as I followed her back inside to talk to my aunt Fatima, mortified by the fact that I’d made a fool of myself.
I’d almost made the biggest mistake of my life and kissed my best friend the night before he left for another country. All because I couldn’t keep my feelings in check.
So for the rest of the night, I did what I’d done for years. I’d pretended like I didn’t feel anything for the boy next door and promised myself to never bring it up. Even when he came over the next morning with fresh blueberry danishes—my favorites—and asked to talk about the night before.
Instead, I’d swept us through the packed itinerary I’d organized for his last day, deflecting every prolonged glance and filling every moment of silence that stretched too long with nonsensical blabbering.
Then, when it was finally time for him to leave later that night for three impossibly long years in Paris, I’d given a friendly hug, smiled, and waved him off.
Only when I was in the sanctuary of my childhood bedroom, where pieces of Ezra clung to every corner of my room, did I finally let the tears I’d kept at bay fall and grieve what could have been.