Page 72 of One Day

“Sunny,” I warn, opening my eyes to find mischief glimmering in her brown eyes and a smile stretched across her lips. “What about holding my hand?”

She moves her hand down my arm and slips it into mine, lacing our fingers together until they fit perfectly. “You can talk to her. You can make this right. She loves you, Cowboy. So much so, she came all the way to Michigan after talking to you this morning. There is nothing to worry about. You’re going to clear the air and have some pie, and everything will be fine. I promise,” she assures me, pressing her lips to my jaw. Her warmth seeps into my skin, telling me I can do this. “We’ll talk later.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

Reluctantly, I loosen my hold on her and let her take a step back from me. I shouldn’t be feeling this tense about talking with my mom. I shouldn’t already be missing Sonya when she’s still standing right in front of me, but here I am, missing her. “Sunny?”

She rests her hand on the side of the door, leaning her head against it. “Yeah?”

“Thank you.”

She grins. “Always.”

The door clicks shut, leaving me to stare at it. My chest grows tighter by the second. My body is already aching for her—the way her body molds to mine, her heat sinking beneath my skin, warming me from the inside out, her sugary sweet smile, her mischievous eyes, her citrus smell. I miss everything, and it hasn’t even been a minute.

“I think we have a few things to talk about, Peach.”

I turn my head to find my mom leaning into the archway, breaking the living space from the bedrooms, her arms loosely crossed over her chest. “Yeah, we do,” I say, stepping toward the living room to settle on the couch. “I’m sorry for not being honest with you.”

She nods, sinking onto the coffee table in front of me. “Why weren’t you?”

“I didn’t want to upset you. It’s…” I swallow around the words, leaning forward on my elbows, and sink my fingers into my hair. “It’s always been you and me against the world. I never thought I would ever be this far away from you, but I got here, and it was like breathing in fresh air. Everything I thought I had in Ashmore was just the tip of the iceberg. I realized there was so much more out there, and every time I came home, I’d miss here a little bit more. I don’t know when it happened, but at some point, this became home. I know I should have told you sooner. I shouldn’t have led you on. Do you hate me?”

She rests her hands on my cheek and tips my head up to meet her eyes. “Walker, there is nothing you could do that would ever make me hate you. I am so immensely proud of you and the man you have become. You inspire me, Peach.”

“Mama…”

“I had plans to come here to try and convince you to change your mind, but that would have been selfish of me. To ask you to give this up,” she says, pausing when her hand moves down to rest over my heart. “To leave her.”

I press my lips together and curl my fingers around her hand, ready to pull away when she smiles at me. “We’re just friends.”

She smiles. “Walker, my love, you are fooling no one. Friends don’t look at their friends the way you were looking at that girl,” she says, a teasing tone wrapped in her words. “My mom used to tell me that we each had a person in this world. Someone who understood us entirely. An extension of our heart, walking outside our chest. I never understood that until the nurse was resting you on mine. You are my everything, Peach. All I need to be happy is for you to be happy, and you are happy here, aren’t you? With her.”

“Yeah, I am.”

“Then I want you to take that internship, and I want you to crush it,” she says, squeezing my hands where they’re held between us. “And I want you to get your head out of your ass and tell Sonya you love her because you deserve every ounce of happiness.”

I fight the burning in my chest and the utter relief that coats it at her words. I don’t need her blessing, but that’s what this is. The affection in her voice, the clarity. She’s giving me permission to let go of the guilt I’ve been carrying around. “I love you.”

“I love you, too, Peach.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

SONYA

When I get home from Walker's, Bekah is in the middle of applying brown hair dye to Everett’s bleached hair. The sound of the alarm beeping alerts them both to my presence. When I step inside, I’m hit with the smell of fresh-baked cookies and ammonia.

“Hey,” Bekah greets me first, lifting the wide black brush coated in dye in a wave on my route to the cooling rack. “I thought you were heading over to Walker’s? You’re back soon.”

“Yeah, his mom ended up showing up, and they have some stuff they need to talk about, so I decided to head home. I have some app stuff I need to work on anyway,” I explain, grabbing a still warm chocolate chip cookie.

“Everything okay?” Everett asks as he sets his phone face down on the counter, and brings his foot up to the edge of the stool. His tattooed hands wrap around his shin to hug his leg to his chest. The ink on his hands and legs tell a story as he interlocks his fingers.

I nod my head, biting down on my bottom lip. “I think so. Just some miscommunication on his part, and now that everything is finally out in the open, they just need to talk it out,” I share and split my cookie in half, holding one end out to him. “What made you decide to go back to brown?” I ask, in desperate need to change the subject from Walker.

In all the time I’ve known Everett, he’s had every color of the rainbow in his hair but never the natural brown he was born with. It feels significant like maybe he’s finally shrugging off the weight he’s been carrying around on his shoulders since he got to Michigan. Letting the mask he’s been hiding behind down so we can finally see the version of Everett Moran we’ve all been waiting to meet.

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