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The screen door creaks open, pulling me out of

“I wondered where you ran off to,” she says, helping the door close gently, like she remembers the way it used to slam

With her purse hooked on her shoulder, she struts across the wooden floorboards, lets it fall down her arm, and takes the seat beside me—an unexpected move

“I h “I s I never kneas ed somewhere with all of my … eccentricities”

My jaw tenses before I offer a simple, “Me too”

We linger in a ht have been

“It was real,” she says, “wasn’t it?”

“Yeah, Blaire It was real” I rake ht jaw The fact that she doubted any of it for a second breaks h I can’t blaht … I’ you”

“You don’t have to say the things you think I want to hear”

“That’s not what I’m—”

“—My father told ht” She shs “And how if he’d have married her, he never would’ve met my mother I need to accept the fact that you’re not my person anymore … that maybe you never were”

Her words are sharp, but they cut like a rusted blade: jagged and tortuous

The truth lingers on the tip ofto be breathed to life

Ironic how the very person who gave her the speech about first loves—is the saether

She wasn’t gone to NYC but six weeks when her father called me out of the blue and asked e naivete, I assu so he wanted me to be a part of