Page 139 of Catching Sparks

Bryce stops brushing my hair with her fingers. “Five days is long enough to spend crying over a man. You don’t need him. Love and want him, yeah, but need him? Not a fat chance in hell. The only person you need is yourself. And right now, you need to pick yourself up and get in the shower.”

She’s right. I know it. But I still make no move to crawl out of her lap.

“I’m comfortable here.”

Flicking me in the ear, she scoffs. “Get your ass out of bed, Poppy. We’re going to get coffee.”

“When’s the last time you ate?” Anna asks.

“Yesterday.”

“And what did you have?”

“Toast.”

“Like the toast on your nightstand? I think I see some mold on it,” Bryce grunts.

“No, you don’t. I only made it this morning.”

Anna blows out a breath. “It doesn’t matter. Let’s just get you wet and soaped up. Your stink is burning my nose.”

Pushing myself into a sitting position, I flash her a scowl. “You’re supposed to be the nice one, Anna.”

“Tough love, baby,” she sings.

Bryce pats me on the back before moving off the bed and offering me her hand. Reluctantly, I take it and let her pull me up.

“She can be nice to you again once you’re back to normal,” she says.

Anna crawls across the bed and leans up on her knees to hug me from behind. I melt into her embrace, the tiniest smile pulling at my mouth.

“We love you, Pops.”

“No matter what,” Bryce adds.

I ignore how weird it feels to smile and nod. My emotions make it hard to keep from crying again. I’m far too fragile for all of this right now, but I love it all the same regardless.

“I’m going to shower,” I say before moving out of the comfort of their touches. “Then we’ll get coffee. My phone is somewhere in the sheets, if one of you wouldn’t mind plugging it in for me.”

Bryce’s eyes narrow. “Yeah, we’ll find your phone. But I swear to God, you better not let it die like that again when you’re like this. If you hadn’t been holed up in here instead of your house, I’d have been barging in after the first day when I didn’t hear from you. Eliza ensured us on more than one occasion that you were here and alive.”

Guilt burns in my gut. “Fair enough. Is that why she stopped by?”

She didn’t try to come inside, just knocked and asked if I was okay, and I didn’t think it was weird at the time. I just wanted to be alone. If she had asked to come in, I’d have felt like shit saying no, considering I’ve been staying here when really, I have no right to.

“That, and she was worried about you,” Anna says.

“She’s too sweet for her own good.” I scratch at my scalp, my dirty hair making it itch. “Alright, now I’m showering.”

“Have fun,” Bryce says, giving my back a shove.

The last thing I see before I disappear into the bathroom is Anna turning to root through the mess of sheets on the bed, searching for my phone. My heart aches at the thought of washing the sheets, but the only thing continuing to leave them dirty is going to do is remind me that Garrison is gone.

And he’s not coming back.

With an iced matcha tea latte in one hand and the keys to Beautifully Bold in the other, I stride down Main Street with my girls flanking me.

A shower was definitely needed, and after standing beneath the hot stream for half an hour and washing my hair and body three times, I feel better. Still brutally raw, but not so broken.

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