Page 74 of One Day

“Perfect.” I check it off my list and drag my pen to the next thing. “Act as if you’re logging in, and then try to find the calendar feature.”

He follows my instruction and flips it around to show me, before I give him the next thing on the list. For the next half hour, he listens to each direction I give and fills in the space with helpful feedback. By the time I get to the last thing, his cookies are gone, and my checklist is covered in notes to make the necessary adjustments I need to smooth out the user experience before finalizing the design.

“I can’t believe you did all of this,” he says, setting my phone down before getting up to lie down next to me. “They’re going to love it.”

My lips curl up. “You think so?”

“It’s more of a fact than opinion,” he says, tucking his arm under his head. “Are you ready for a summer off?”

“So ready,” I say with a sigh. “It’ll be nice having Walker around. He got an internship with a firm in Rosenthal, so he doesn’t have to leave like last summer.”

“Have you two talked about where this thing between you two is going?”

“What would we talk about? Things are good between us.”

A small smile creeps onto his lips, a gentle contrast to the look in his eye that is all but screaming, “you can’t be serious” at me. “Sunny, come on. How have you not realized it yet?”

“Realized what?”

“You’re going to make me spell it out for you?”

I shake my head and jump off the bed, moving back to my desk to set my notebook down and put as much space between us as possible before I spit out something I can’t take back. Like saying I might be falling for him. Or something even more ludicrous, like I’m way past falling.

“No, because we’re not going to have this conversation.”

“What conversation?” Everett asks, stopping in the doorway with his freshly dyed head. The once beach blond hair is now a shade of golden brown, deepening the color in his eyes.

Before I can open my mouth to compliment it and distract them both from this topic, Dylan says, “That fact that Sonya is clearly in love with Walker.”

The silence is deafening as both their gazes shift to me. Pressure weighing down my shoulders. I want to argue with him. I really do because being in denial is always easier than admitting the truth, but I can’t. Not this time.

I don’t know when things shifted, but I can’t avoid it. Walker isn’t just my friend anymore, and that should scare me. Things changing between us, becoming tainted or ruined, was my worst fear going into this. I knew there was a risk of feelings getting tangled, but the panic I thought I’d feel doesn’t come.

Instead, I’m met with something I hadn’t prepared myself for—relief.

It’s as though I’ve spent all this time just waiting for my head to catch up with what my heart always knew. Walker is more than I could have ever hoped for. That fuzzy feeling I dreamed of as a little girl when I found my person. It’s been right in front of me all along, and I went and held myself back from really feeling it. Feeling him.

All I know now is I never want to let him go.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

WALKER

It’s been six hours since my mom showed up outside my apartment door, and since then, all I have been able to think about is Sonya. It’s not new. She’s often the subject of all my thoughts, but this is different. She used to be a dusting, a distant image that fills my head, but for the last six hours, she’s been the leading actress in every thought. Every single one of them.

A warm coloring on the usual black and white images that fill my mind. She is the center of my fucking universe. The echo of my mom’s words sits on my shoulders, pressing down and anchoring me to the reality of everything. Sonya is the sun. She’s my sun.

And I don’t know what to do with that, but I should. For the last few weeks—hell, the last few months—I’ve been avoiding my own reflection. Avoiding the truth that has been obvious since the day I met Sonya. I have been delusional about everything going on between us. I thought we were friends. It’s what I’ve been telling myself since she walked into my life and lit up the edges. She’s been burning her way to the center of my life, taking up every inch.

Her warmth is a branding on my skin. I gave her my heart the second she stumbled into my lap and called me Cowboy, and I never once bothered to ask for it back. I happily gave it over to her. It was easy to do. The way she has slipped into my life. Pressing into the corners of my mind, my body, my bed.

She’s everywhere.

In everything.

She is everything.

I can’t imagine ever wanting anyone else. She’s it for me, and I’ve just been too blind to my own denial to admit it to myself. She’s all I want. She’s all I am ever going to want, and I realize that now in blinding color. I’ve let myself go too long without being honest with myself, and I don’t care to keep making that mistake. Not with Sonya.

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