Chapter 36
Riley
I hate this, the feeling of broken glass piercing through my chest with every breath I take. I hate walking around like a shell of who I am because it hurts to do anything in this place that’s haunted by my feelings for Dom.
I have zero chill, I know. I can’t believe I thought I could do casual. It’s all or nothing for me, and as much as I wanted to feel the same way about him, that was not the case. I went full throttle, only to be met with a stop sign halfway through.
“Open up, Wills!” I shout at my sister’s door. What is it with these two not coming to their doors when they’re being called?
Maybe the two of them got all the patience I didn’t.
I’m ready to knock again when Willa opens the door, apron on, her freshly cut hair pulled back away from her face.
I’m still shocked she came home, but I’m happy, nonetheless.
I know it’ll be temporarily, just until she can pass that test of hers, one I have no doubt she’ll pass.
She came running the minute Lilly needed her here when someone else quit and she was about to lose it over one more thing going wrong.
Now, she’s helping, and I love having her home.
“What are you baking, and did you make me some?” I step over the threshold and straight into the kitchen to find it an organized mess. When I cook, the kitchen looks like something exploded in it, Lilly’s looks like nobody’s cooking, and Willa’s somewhere in between. It tracks.
Willa loves baking—stress baking, but baking all the same. I refuse to acknowledge the reason for her brownies today and just ask how long it’ll take for them to be ready.
“Putting them in the oven now. What’s the issue? There has to be one, right? For you to be knocking so desperately.”
I hop onto the countertop, taking my broken heart with me as I spill the events from the past almost two months to my sister.
She listens attentively and not once tells me I told you so, even though she could, considering she did, in fact, tell me so.
She asks questions for clarification and holds my hand when I tear up telling her how I fell in love with him and how now it feels like I landed on concrete.
His love felt like snoozing on a warm beach day, but now, it’s like sand paper. “So now, I’m broken-hearted, not knowing what to do, and it hurts so bad, I think my heart is gonna give out.”
“Your heart won’t give out,” she says in a mood darker than the night sky before a terrible storm. I shouldn’t have said that.
“I’m sorry. I’m being dramatic. I didn’t think it through.”
“It’s fine. But what do you need from me right now? Do you want advice? Hugs? You wanna go for a run?”
“You’re gonna go running with me?” Willa doesn’t run. She has two left feet, or so she says, so I’m shocked to hear that.
She squeezes my knee, a hug in a different gesture. “For you, I will.”
“Thanks, Wills.” I tuck a piece of hair behind her ear, smiling at the thin silver strand that pops through her golden blonde. “It suits you.”
She shakes her head. “I don’t want to talk about it, okay? How about we get back to your broken heart instead.”
Oh, this—
“Do not call me a bitch, Riley, or you will see one.”
With my hands up in the air in defeat, I add, “I wasn’t going to say anything.”
“Yeah right. Anyway. I’m sorry you’re going through this, but honestly, you’re so young. The chances of you meeting the love of your life at twenty two?”
Slim. Even wilder for me to think I actually did after just a handful of months. But it felt so right. I’ve never had that feeling before, almost as if we were meant to be. If not forever, at least for now. Maybe the now was just shorter lived than I thought.
I exhale, wishing my pain would leave with every breath I take, but it doesn’t.
Unfortunately, love doesn’t work like that.
But you know what? I should shake it off, because even if it’s not me and him in every lifetime, or in this one, for that matter, at least I got to love him and spend time with him, mending my heart too.
I might be too much for him, but I’m not too much for the right person.
Right?
Right.
“You’re right.”
“A summer fling that made you fall is also not the worst. How many people go through life without finding that feeling at least once, you know?”
I do know. Many. So many.
“Per usual, you’re right again.”
She squeezes my shoulder before opening her arms to me for the hug I’m sure she knows is coming. I take it, dropping my head on her shoulder and finding comfort in her.
“It’ll pass, Riley. Let yourself feel it, but it will pass.”
She’s right. I should let it all out, let my body understand the pain and process it. And I will, the best way I know how.
I gasp. This is genius. “You’re genius!”
“Me? Why?” she asks between awkward laughter.
“Why don’t you come to the shed Friday night, and I’ll show you?”
The oven beeps, announcing the brownies are done. “But I won’t leave here without at least three of those and a session of you telling me what your plan for the summer is.”
“Deal,” she says.