26. Nate
Iturn the corner onto Third Avenue and duck into Flo’s.
“Come fifteen minutes before opening or right after we close.” Those were Flo’sinstructions when she opened the bakery, reminding us that as much as her friends were important, her recipes deserved the spotlight for once. I had to agree with her. They were soul healers.
Which was exactly why I was there at 5:59 PM on the dot. She closed her doors at six,giving me a minute to slip in before she locked them.
I peered around the seating area, hopping over the empty booths and unoccupied stoolsand realising I was the only one in here.
“Hellooooo…” I called out, my voice echoing off the tiles, before a cloud of lilac and light brown waves popped up from behind the counter with a tiny scream.
“Oh my Christ, Nate. You scared the shit out of me.” she says, taking in a breath and resting a hand over her heart.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I rush. “I thought you were in the back.”
A laugh breaks through her breaths, her green eyes softening. “It’s fine. Just… long day,that’s all.”
“Do you need any help with anything? Cleaning? Eating leftovers?”
“I think you’ll find that’s why I’m here.” My best friend, Jacob, calls from the door I justwalked through, my head twisting to face him. Stealthily quiet for such a tall man. He passes me a crescent smile, one of his dimples on show, before he looks to Flo. “I brought wine and that spicy pasta from that deli you like, and—”
Flo bolts from around the counter and shoots past me, The breeze that follows hersmells like croissants and sugar, as her run takes her to her boyfriend before she leaps up and into his arms. I lean over and grab the wine and pasta from Jacob”s hands so he can hug her back.
Then I look away, for obvious reasons.
“Have I ever told you that I love you?” I hear Flo mumble into Jacob’s chest.
What sounded like a grunt came from my best friend. “Many times, but feel free to neverstop saying it.”
“Oh, I plan to do a whole lot more than that to you later—”
“Guys, I love you, but please wait until I’m gone to rub it in my face that you’re happyand in love.”
“What’s up with you?” Jacob calls as she unwraps Flo from his waist.
“He’s sad, and in love,” Flo whispers too loudly. She gets a glare from me. I get astuck-out tongue from her.
“Oh, right. How’s that working out for you?” Jacob asks as he rounds the counter andtakes the wine out of my hands, pouring out three glasses as Flo whips past me again, stealing back her pasta and leaping up onto one of the stools lined against the counter.
As I let out a sigh I’d been holding since this morning, I launched up onto the counter, myfeet dangling as I replied, “It sucks. Really sucks. Wouldn’t recommend it.”
“Well,” Jacob hands me one of the glasses filled halfway with white wine, then handsone to Flo before taking the last for himself and claiming the stool next to Flo. “I think we can delay closing down for a while so we can hear this.” he says, nodding to Flo with a grin. “Agreed?”
Flo takes a quick sip of her wine. “Oh, hang on.” She swallows before yelling, “Girls!?”
Not a moment later, two girls appear in the staffroom doorway. Both with wide eyes, onewith a black bob and a fringe, the other one brunette. They look frozen. Wide eyes glued to me.
“Rory… it’s Nate fucking Patricks.” The one with the jet-black hair says to the brunette.
The brunette, Rory, shakes her head as she whispers to the other, “I’m telling you, Cora,we literally have the best jobs in the world.” It really wasn’t a whisper at all, though, seeing as though we all heard every word from across the bakery.
Cora cups a hand over her mouth, but it does nothing to stop us from hearing when shesays back, “We get to take home the leftover pastries and hang out with the biggest celebrities in the world right now.”
They both giggle before Flo interrupts. “You know we can hear you both, right?”
Cora’s balled fist raises to her mouth as she clears her throat. “Florence, just how manyfamous people do you plan on introducing us to? Because if it gets better than Nate Patricks and Jacob Emerson, I have got to start wearing makeup to work.”
Rory nods too. “Yep. Me too. Clear mascara and bronzing drops aren’t going to cut itanymore.”
“Okay, first of all,” Flo said, raising her wine-glass free hand at the pair. “You know Jacob.You’ve met him before,”
In between her words, I hear the brunette, Rory, whisper to her friend, “But he still makesme nervous,” while Cora whispers back to her, “Me too.”
“And secondly, Nate is twenty-six and is already taken.”
I whip my head to her. “No, I’m not.”
“Well, you practically are.”
“I thought he was with Adaline Moore?” I hear one of the girls whisper ahead of me.
My eyes land on them. “Where’d you hear that?” I ask quietly, but both of them gofrozen again.
“Okay… it isn’t just Jacob who makes me nervous now,” Cora whispers.
“I just got chills…” Rory says back to her, running a hand along her forearm.
“Okay, it doesn’t matter!” Flo exclaims, her laugh tangling around her words. “I onlycalled you in here to tell you that you can go home early. I’ll see you on Saturday.”
The girls’ eyes are a twin of one another, wider than they were when they saw me. Rory’slips pry open. “Can we—”
“Yes, you can take the leftovers. But leave that box for the woman’s shelter, I’ll take themtoday.”
“Okay, see ya later, Flo. Bye, Jacob!” They both mutter their goodbyes before thebrunette, Cora, turns and locks eyes with me again. “Oh, yeah. Bye, Nate Patricks.”
I shake my head as my lips form a smile. “Just Nate is fine.”
Then they both run away, giggling.
The wine that I’d been idly swirling in my glass meets my lips, the liquid courage glidingdown my throat as I nod my chin at Flo. “They seem nice.”
Her chuckle and eye roll told me all I needed to know. “They’re a handful, but my God, are they good employees. The least I can do is let them talk to my famous friends at the end of a busy day to say thank you.” She takes a sip from her glass before putting it down on the counter. “So, spill it. Why are you here?”
Jacob nudges her arm. “Because he’s sad and in love, I thought we established that?”
“I’m not sad,” I shrug. “I was in the neighbourhood, thought I’d stop by.” Neither of themsays anything. “Well, I was passing, the production lot isn’t far from here when you think about it.” I nod to Jacob. “Thought a catch-up might be nice.”
Again, neither of them says anything, which was ironically the loudest thing in the room.
And here’s the thing about anxiety, well, mine anyway— it makes me hyper-aware ofeverything. I can see the words that people will speak before they speak them. The overthinking in my head makes me question obscure things. I pick up on things that others usually won’t recognise.
Like the way Jacob’s left corner of his mouth is half an inch higher than the other one. Hedoesn’t believe a word I’ve just said. Now I’ll start to panic because he’s one step closer to knowing the truth. Then I’ll keep talking. Not because I want to, but because I want to hide for as long as possible.
Which is stupid, when you think about it. I don’t know why I’m trying to hide why I’mhere when it’s the reason I came here in the first place. To talk to my friends. To get guidance. To not keep them at arm’s length about me and Addy anymore.
Which was what happened the last time I was here. With Flo.
I came in here the day after Asher showed up. I denied that I was there because I neededto talk to someone. I said I was fine. Flo’s head is titled a tad more to the left than it usually does. I told her that I had some personal stuff going on. And before I knew it, I’d told her everything.
From water balloon to Polaroid…
Everything.
I drop my head with a sigh, the weight of their stares too much to handle. There was nopoint in doing this dance with myself anymore. What was the point of hiding from the two people who saw straight through me?
Once the shakes in my breath had simmered, I lifted my eyes, my lips twinging, finallyready to break open.
“I kissed Addy.”
“WHAT?” Were both of their responses. Equal pitch, and the same gasped tone. Quitefreaky, to be honest.
“I kissed her. This morning.” I look over to Flo. “She found the books.”
Flo’s gasp rattled in my ears. “Oh shit.”
I saw Jacob’s face change. “What books?”
It was then that I remembered that I hadn’t told my best friend any of this. Not even whathad happened between me and Addy. Nothing.
“Addy’s books,” Flo answered for me.
“Like, her favourite books?” His eyes went narrow as his eyebrows screwed together.
Flo shuffled to face him. “The books she wrote.”
Jacob pulled his head back, his legs falling to the ground and pacing the tiles. “What doyou mean? Addy doesn’t write books.”
“She does, has done since she was ten,” I say to him, my eyes baring no barrier that anyof this was a joke.
His hand racked through the strands of his hair, saying there for a moment or two as hebreathed, “This is news to me.”
Flo takes a sip of her wine before she speaks. “It was news to me too before he told me afew weeks ago—”
“Wha— You knew about this?!”
“Not for long!”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because he told me not to.” They both look at me, before Flo shakes her head andsqueezes her eyes closed. “But can we please get back to the more pressing matter, which is the fact that you two kissed this morning?”
I let out a sigh as Jacob stopped pacing, his arms crossing over his chest andleaning against one of the booths as he eyed me.
“She called me last night, early in the morning. She was at a bar, alone, and I didn’t evenhave to think before I went to find her. I eventually did, and then I brought her back to my place because she’d lost her purse and didn’t have her keys. Anyway, I woke up this morning and found her looking through her books.
“We talked, kind of, before she got a call from Goldie, who’s now moving to London. Shebroke down, curled up against me, and just … sobbed. Then she looked up at me, and I wiped away her tears because seeing her cry always makes me start crying, and then… I kissed her.”
I look up from my hands, twitching and fidgeting, nothing to ease the thumping in mychest. Both of them are fixated on me, as though I’d just told them the meaning of life and everything in their minds finally made sense.
Flo was welling up, I could see that from where I was sat, the sheen that glazed her eyes.
She loved Addy probably just as much as I did, Jacob too.
Then I feel like an asshole, guilt settling in my stomach. The unwelcome tension thattied us all together never should have been there, existing purely because I was too scared to clue them up about what happened, letting them dance around our awkwardness and navigate how to exist in our deafening silence.
It wasn’t fair. On either of them.
But as my eyes drifted over to find my best friend, the brown in his eyes the dullest I’dever seen them… I’d never felt worse.
Jacob was long overdue an explanation. He was there the day we crossed paths again,watching us catch up on the differences seven years and time and space caused us.
But before I can ask whether or not the closedown of the bakery can be delayed for at least a few hours for a deep dive into our history, Flo takes a step closer to me.
“Did you… tell her about…”
I know what she’s going to ask me. It was the one thing she told me I had to tell her assoon as possible, barricade the angst and end the war we’d started. And I didn’t. Couldn’t. It didn’t feel right to, not this morning. I couldn’t tell her that the day she thought I wasn’t at the pier, I was, not when she was sobbing. Not when she’d just found out her baby sister was moving halfway across the world.
“No… but I will.” she eyes me. “Soon. I promise.”
Silence hovers over the three of us, before a rush of air, one that sounded like a crashingwave, blew out of Jacob as he leaned off the booth, his hands back in his hair. “I feel like I’ve just watched the last episode of a ten-series show. I’m so confused it’s not even funny.”
One look in his eyes told me… he needed to know.
I lifted my chin towards him, nervously pulling at my lips as I asked, “Do you want toknow why we are the way we are?”
Broad was the smile that stretched across his face. “I’ve needed to know since the day Imet her,” he sighed, eyeing Flo before claiming the seat next to her again, nodding quickly at me as he muttered, “Yes, please.”
“You’re an asshole.” My best friend of God knows how many years says to me.
I’m pretty sure my shoulders cramp from how hard I shrug them. “But what was I supposedto do? I asked her the day I left for college if anything was going on with her and Asher, and she told me there wasn’t. When, in my hand, was a photo of them kissing.” I look around as if the answer is written on the bakery walls. “How does that make me the asshole?”
“Why didn’t you just confront her right then and there?” Jacob asks, brows overlyfurrowed.
“I wanted to give her time to confess. Come clean.” I look down at the invisible watch onmy wrist. “I’m still waiting for her to, and it’s been nearly eight years since.”
“But that just doesn’t seem like something Addy would do.” Flo chimes in. “Are you sureit’s Asher in the picture and not you?”
Me and Jacob eye each other before directing our attention to Flo, her innocent questionmaking me smile. “I’ve looked at that picture for so long that I’d probably jump off a cliff if it turns out it was just me she was kissing.” They both huffed out a laugh. “It’s him. I wish it wasn’t but… it is.”
“And then he just turns up out of the blue and joins the cast. What are the chances.” Jacobponders.
“We were fine before Asher showed up. Comfortable.” They narrow their eyes at me. “Well, I would have preferred not to hate her, and her not to hate me, but that’s how weexist. It’s what we know.”
“But you didn’t used to.” Jacob reminds me, before rubbing a hand over his stubble. “Soafter you found this picture, you kept it to yourself, but still promised her that you’d meet her after your freshman year of college was over?” I nod at him. “Why?”
I shrug. “I think I decided as soon as I saw that picture that I wasn’t going to see heragain. She’d broken me, and I was cruel and hurt and wanted to hurt her too. After ghosting her for the year, I didn’t think she’d show up anyway.”
Hopping off her stool, Flo heads over to join Jacob by the booths, both of them facingme. She dips her fork into the tub of pasta that she’d cracked open right before I told Jacob everything, sinking a piece into her mouth as she asks, “Why did you not see each other when you went to college? Even before you found the Polaroid; why have a year apart?”
“She had the world to see. I had things to learn. We both needed time to develop awayfrom each other. She’d been my comforter since the moment we met, and I’d been her shoulder to cry on; we needed to figure out how to do that thing for ourselves before we became too attached.”
Jacob chimes in. “And did it help, not seeing her?”
No.The word flashes across my mind, some deep primal instinct that knew my answerbefore he’d asked the question. Even after knowing she’d cheated on me, no… it didn’t help.
I still missed her. I still craved her. I still wanted her around to simmer my heartbeat from time to time.
No… having her away from me only made things worse. Which was what I think mademe hate her. Not the fact that she kissed Asher and lied to me; I hated her because no matter how hard I tried to be okay without her, function without her, exist without her… I never could.
I shake my head at them both.
“Is that why you went back? The day you promised.” Jacob asks, and before I know it, that day is projecting in my mind.
Seven Years Ago
Get in. Grab the Polaroid. Get out.
That’s the plan that’s been running through my mind since I started the drive fromStanford. The words rolled through me, along with the breeze and familiar salt air I’d missed blowing right at me these past twelve months.
Perhaps a drive down the Pacific Coast Highway with the roof of my car down wasexactly what I needed to brush off the cobwebs that had spawned while I was gone, ridding me of the feeling that I hadn’t forgotten the things I promised to leave behind the day I left.
She was in my head again then. Fiery hair and equally fiery eyes.
I’m hoping she made good on her promise to leave town for good last year, praying thatshe wasn’t home.
I’m turning onto the street Addy and I spent our childhood running up and down soonerthan I would have liked, clocking the flower bed of lilacs outside Mrs. Delower’s house, surrounded and guarded by the mini picket fence that Addy tripped over one time. I carried her back to my house when she did, found a band-aid, nearly fell over when she kissed my cheek and ran straight back outside.
I shake my head, another mental cobweb shaking free.
Then I spy my house in the distance. And then hers.
My heart becomes a drum, beating nowhere near in time to the music that I’m supposedto run on. I turn the music up in my car even louder to distract me from it, which is pointless, because I’m pulling into the driveway of my old house and switching off the engine.
I’ll say hello to my parents once I’m done. I told my mom that I was coming down to seeher and Dad anyway, one last dinner with them before I head to camp to be a counsellor for the summer. It’ll suck, I know that, but it beats sitting in my dorm and not doing anything. So bear traps and strangers for the next few weeks it was.
I get out of the car and walk over to the front of Addy’s house. I doubt she’ll be hereanyway, so I don’t know why I’m scared that she’s the one who’ll open the door. She made it clear that the second I left that she would too.
But then I remembered that there was a chance she would be here today, around, nearby. Maybe.
I’m hoping, however harsh the thought is, that ignoring her texts, and her calls, made herrealise that I wanted to forget she ever existed. And if that were the case, if she’d gotten the message, she wouldn’t be here today.
And luckily, after walking up the steps, taking a deep breath, and knocking on the door toher childhood home, I see the faint glow of blonde pigtails and a pink dress bounding over to the door.
“Nateeeeyyy!” Goldie squeals as she skips from the doorway and wraps her arms aroundmy legs. “I’ve missed you, where did you go?” She asks, looking up at me with the eyes she got from Addy. She may as well have reached into my raging heart and torn it into ribbons.
“I’ve missed you, little one. How’re you doing?” I ask her, which wasn’t on the plan, butI can delay the inevitable a few minutes while I catch up with the girl who was practically my little sister, too.
“Okay…” she drawls, unwrapping her arms and stepping back into the doorway. “Idon’t like being the only kid here. It’s weird not having Addy to annoy anymore,” So she’s not here then.“But I did get her room, so that’s fun. But I think we’re moving soon, so I don’t know if that room will be bigger. I think it will be. It’s by the coast, that’s what my mom told me.”
I smile down at her. “You’ll get good sunsets by the coast. You still like them, right?” shehad a thing about watching sunsets, Goldie, and I think it was because Addy told her that’s where her parents got her name from. The golden hour that holds you captive and reminds you that even bad days can end beautifully.
Her eyes widen.“I do, I still love them. I watch them, always.” She looks down at herfeet, covered in shiny ballet flats that match her dress. “But, they’re not as nice when Addy isn’t watching them with me.” She looks back at me. “Have you seen her?”
I shake my head, thankful that the person I’m shaking it at can’t tell that my smile isn’treal.“Not much, I’ve been at college,” her tiny brows furrowed. “Big school.” she nods, pigtails bobbing. “And she’s been doing grown-up stuff, seeing the world. But I’m sure she’ll be back soon.”
And then it hits me…“Goldie, where’s your mom and dad?”
She tosses her head over her shoulder.“In the yard. Do you want me to get them?”
“No!” I rush out, before softening my face. “No, I um… I just came by to grab somethingfrom Addy’s room—”
“My room,” she corrects me. Sassy, just like her sister.
“Your room, sorry. Well, in that case, will you show me where herstuff is?”
She nods, the tiniest dimples shining back at me as she smiles. She looked back over hershoulder to make sure her parents weren’t hovering before taking my hand and dragging me through the doorway and up the stairs.
When we reach a closet, she drops my hand, reaching it up and opening it. The creakfrom the white door has me cringing, hoping that her parents were too deep in the yard to hear anything. As my head travels back to face the door, I spot the boxes piled up inside of the space, battered and bruised cardboard boxes… each one labelled ‘Adaline’s Things,”
At least they boxed them up, I said internally.
“What is it you’re looking for?” Goldie asks, peering around me as I hover over theboxes, wondering where on earth a tiny Polaroid would be kept amongst her things.
“Oh, just something for her birthday,” I say, opening up the box on the top of the pile,revealing books, upon books, and shockingly, even more books.
“But her birthday was last month,”
I turn back to look at her.“I missed it, big school things got in the way. It’s a late birthdaypresent.” She smiles at me, big, fiery eyes softening.
We stay quiet as I start on the second box, which seems to be her room decor. Pictureframes and notebooks, no doubt containing stories she wrote. I lift up a pile of heavy notepads and lock eyes with a hefty pile of paper, bound together with string. My lungs forget their job once my eyes focus on what’s inked on the top page.
‘Book Eight. By Adaline Moore.’
The last time I saw her she’d only written seven. Seven she was proud of. She was nearly done with number eight, claiming that she knew it would be her favourite. Shemust have just finished this after I left.
And I know I shouldn’t, the thought shouldn’t have even trekked across my mind, but Iwas in her house for fucks sake, it wasn’t as though I was running on rationality today. So I take it. I have every other book she’s written, it seems silly not to have the complete set. If I had time, I’d make copies as I did with the rest, and return the original to its wasted place in this closet.
And I’m glad I do, because as I lift the heavy pile of papers, dust mingling with mybreaths… I see it. Clear as day. Faded, slightly, but still visible.
Her. Asher. His mouth on hers. Her hands on his face…
I snatch it before Goldie sees I’ve got it.
The gasp that leaves her mouth makes me think I’ve been caught, but when her handsdive for the book, I relax a little.
“Her book! Is that her present?” She beams, but I don’t miss the way she angled her headaround me, making sure no one else was here to discover her sister’s secret.
“Uhh, yeah. Yeah… I’m… I’m doing something with it.” I lie, but the smile on Goldie’sface tells me she’d believe every word that would ever slip from my mouth.
“Oh, she’ll love it. I know she will!” She keeps smiling up at me. “Do you want to stayfor a while? Not for long though, Mom’s taking me to a callback later.”
I watch her smile falter. “I’d love to, Goldie, but I’ve got to head out. But good luck withyour callback! I’m sure you’ll be awesome, little one.”
“Yeah,” she sighs, and it’s a sigh I’ve heard enough times to know that she’d rather mestay with her as I used to with Addy, when we’d pretend to get lost on our way home from the pier so she’d miss her audition slot. “I’m sure I will.”
I’m still thinking about the way Goldie said those words as I’m pulling into the makeshiftcar park that houses the ”Welcome to Sunfall Pier” sign. Rust was always manifesting in the corners of the faded green sign, but looking at it now, its as though I”ve been away for a hundred years, not just one.
As I switch off the engine, the distant crash of waves replacing what was spewing through the radio, I hear the questions sound off in my mind.
Do I want to be here?
Was I always going to do this?
Was I always going to show up?
There was a moment in time when I would have told you I’d do anything else rather thanbe here right now, waiting for Addy. There was a moment where I felt nothing but pure, white-hot hatred towards her, and if I drown out the sun and the waves, I can still feel it, marching through my body.
But then there’s the part of me, tucked away somewhere I didn’t want to find, that knowsI’m making up the part about hating her just so I feel better about still loving her, even after what she did.
Maybe no matter how I felt towards her, I was always going to be here. In thesecoordinates. At this time.
I peer over at the time on my watch; 8:26 PM.
We agreed to meet at 8:30 PM, because it was just after the sun had fallen behind wherethe ocean ended, cascading pinks and blues and violets and oranges above us. It was our favourite way to exist and forget that there was a world of saying yes because we thought we had to, and anxiety waiting ten feet behind us.
Had she been here since we were last here? I didn’t know. Who knows what was goingthrough her mind this past year? Who knows what was running through her mind the second she heard my voicemail for the first time, then the second time, then the eighty-fifth time?
I hoped she was full of regret. Hoped she felt guilty about lyingto me, to my face. I hoped she spent the year hurting just as much as I did.
But I’m thinking all this and still, I’m getting out of my car and locking it up to go andmeet her like I’d promised.
So, did I really hope all that?
There wasn’t an empty part of my brain that could house that question for now.
Maybe later.
I look back at my car one last time before daring to walk down towards the steps,constructed of driftwood and rope and barely standing. Pebbles and sand and dirt smothered the steps” pathway, with rocks that had been eroded for centuries now lining either side. We never used to come here after sunset, for obvious reasons, but part of me wonders whether the stars would have looked nicer out here, reflecting in the water, dancing in Addy’s eyes.
A question without an answer—useless even thinking about.
My muscle memory takes me to the clearing, the widening of the steps just before themidway point. I slow down my steps somehow, my eyes banking to the right and taking in the shoreline where I spent so much time growing up. Birds chatter above me, filling the silence, blocking out how I could practically feel my heart nearly burst its way out of my chest.
She didn’t deserve to have this much control over me, neither should just the thought ofher. She shouldn’t be the one to calm my heart either, but it’s hard—forgetting the ways the person you loved made all the hurt and panic float away like it was just driftwood in the ocean.
Flashes of deep violet and buttery pinks hover above me, swirling with what was left ofthe clouds. I held onto the sight of them before my thoughts overcrowded my head, my hands raking through my hair.
Who was I kidding, of course she wasn’t going to show up. Somewhere over the lasttwelve months, she must have given up, and realised that we would never be in each other’s lives again. That our strings had been untangled for good.
Fate, stupid decisions, and lies were what kept us apart, and that was how it would be forthe rest of our lives.
Realising that I let out a laugh, humourless and pathetic, as I shook my head, my handsfalling back down my side, my eyes getting lost in what was before me—
There.
Something was there. By the pier.
I didn’t so much as blink as I kept my eyes trained on whatever it was, its body perchedon the edge of the dock, what looked like auburn hair flailing in the breeze—
Firefly.
My heart sighed at the nickname.
I stalked backwards, up a few steps, careful and quiet. My heart aches and thrashes themore I watch her, the more I squint as make out the details of her. I felt the air knocked out of me when I noticed that she wore the white… ivory summer dress. She knows what it means, and knows that I do too.
But she doesn’t know I’m here. Does she expect me to be here? Could she possibly thinkthat I’d want to see her again?
Well, you’re here, aren’t you? The voice inside of me questions. I ignore it.
I watch her as she stands, her delicate feet probably dripping with the ocean, andwanders to the edge. The girl with the dreams that matched the size of the ocean that drifted before her…
And she waits.
She waits, for me.
It’s then that I curse myself for never moving on from her. That I never cast her out of mymemory and forgot that she still walked the earth. Conquered it, on her own, like she promised herself she would.
Seeing as though she was still acting, and had been in probably the highest-grossingmovie to come out this year, it’s no surprise that I’ve not forgotten her. She was quite literally everywhere. In my mind, on billboards… everywhere.
Which was another reason why some part of me still loved her. Wanted her.
I feel an attack coming on when I remember that, when I remember the hold she still hason me, the iron grip on my weak little heart.
But all of it… it’s not fair. She kissed a guy she promised me she hated. She lied to me.
Cheated on me. Threw everything I gave her back in my face. And yet she’s still allowed to control me the way she does, whether she knows it or not?
What part of that was fair?
I shouldn’t want to walk out to her right now. I shouldn’t want to stop hiding and go andhug her, hold her. I shouldn’t want to let her explain and give her a chance to hurt me all over again.
I should want to stop loving her, but I know I never will. No matter what.
She gave up on us… and remembering that is what makes my feet move away from her,back up the steps I was stupid enough to ever walk down again.
And it feels odd, like when you put the opposite ends of a magnet together, it’s that sameresistance that”s trying to drag me back to her. But I fight it, I cry, I curse under my breath and before I know it I’m back in my car.
Somehow I drive back home, under the stars, trying my hardest not to think about whatthey’d look like reflecting off Addy’s eyes.
At least now I have the reminder of what she did, when she kissed Asher, and hopefullyhaving that Polaroid with me on the days when I get the urge to call her will help me move on. For good.
Hopefully…
I look back up at Jacob, blinking my dry eyes, ready to answer his question.
“I think part of me went back just to see if she would. I hoped that if she did, seeing herthere and seeing the moment she realised I wasn’t coming would be this satisfying moment, the revenge that I needed to help me move on. Which sounds fucked up, but what I saw hurt me, and it hurt more when I figured out that I’d never truly hate her for it.”
My eyes dip to Flo, her cheeks now wet with tears, before I feel my heart crack and lookback at Jacob. “But, originally, all I went back for was the Polaroid.”
“Why?” Jacob asked.
“Because with it, it would remind me that if I wanted to move on, I had to stop lovingher.”
My best friend leans forward, a whisper of a smile on his face as he asks. “And how’sthat working out for you?”