Page 4 of Catch and Release

She’d spent a few days replaying every moment of her time with Leo—the good and the bad. Enough to realize that she’d never be able to escape the memories of him in California.

Once she promised Charlie she’d find a good therapist, her best friend helped her get out the door. The next week was a blur, which was how Willa liked it.

Between figuring out someone to sublease the room in her apartment with Charlie (luckily, a new instructor at their yoga studio jumped at the opportunity), packing up all her stuff (all of it fit into two suitcases and eleven boxes), figuring out what to get rid of and what to ship to her new address (a shockingly involved process on both fronts), resigning from her job at the yoga studio (they were, unsurprisingly, very zen about the whole thing), and planning her travel out to Alabama (a first class, one way ticket), she barely had time to wallow in her heartbreak and shame.

Until she found herself sitting in seat 2A, drinking a bloody mary and staring out the window, overthinking every moment of their relationship in her head. The six-and-a-half hour trip felt endless, and no amount of movies could make her stop thinking about it.

How she was played a fool.

How he broke her heart.

How much she hated herself for it.

Even now, with the car window open and the salty sea air wafting through her hair, she was replaying a recent conversation she’d had with Leo.

It was their two year anniversary, and he’d scheduled them a sunset dinner cruise. He’d gifted her a gold necklace with a ginormous ruby in the center. She’d gifted him a Giants sweatshirt he’d been eyeballing—and some expensive and complex lingerie she showed off later that night.

“Can you believe it’s been two years since you fell on your ass after attempting to do a headstand?” Willa joked, her eyes crinkling with restrained laughter as she recalled how they first met.

“Hey, I can do a handstand just fine, so I really thought I’d be able to do it,” Leo grimaced. “Clearly, I was very wrong, but it worked out for me, didn’t it?”

She bit her lip.

“It worked out for both of us,” she replied.

He grabbed her hand and gently kissed it.

This was it. The moment Willa had been waiting for to broach a topic that made her… well, jittery as hell. She considered herself a pretty self-assured, confident person. Being nervous? It made her uneasy. It made her feel like she didn’t know herself.

“So, I’ve been thinking,” she started.

Leo looked at her expectantly.

“Yes?” he grinned wickedly at her.

“Two years.”

“We’ve established that,” he continued smirking.

“That’s a long time.”

“Indeed.”

“So I think it’s time that we take a step forward. A big one. A good one.”

He raised his eyebrows, a smile still playing on his lips as he left room for her to complete her thought.

“Do you want to move in together?” she asked.

Willa held her breath as his smile dropped. At the time, she just thought he was caught off guard. She was slightly annoyed that he seemed so shocked by the turn of the conversation because, like she’d prefaced, they’d been together for two years. She wasn’t trying to get married and have babies anytime soon.

So why was he so surprised that she would want to move in together? She thought maybe it was just a guy thing, maybe he was just a little dense.

Of course, hindsight is 20/20.

She knew now that he was trying to figure out how to keep the relationship going without doing anything serious. His apartment—the one they usually stayed at—must’ve been a secret one his wife didn’t know about.

“Move in together?” Leo repeated after a few moments of silence.

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