Page 141 of Fly with Me

“I know. Me too.” He hugged her tightly. “This year has been hell on you.”

She sniffed and pulled away. “Maybe I’m ready for a fresh start. Maybe I was thinking about the list all wrong.” Maybe it wasn’t about national parks or whitewater rafting at all.

She grabbed a pen and turned to a blank page in her notebook.

A couple of hours later, Derek was picking up food and she was still scribbling ideas in her notebook. A text came in on her phone, breaking the silence with a loud buzzing that even made Gus jump from where he was snuggled beside her.

STELLA

I miss you.

She dropped the pen. Olive couldn’t hold it back anymore. When Derek walked through the door she was still crying. Full- on Claire Danes in Homeland ugly weeping. He pushed the brown bag onto the counter and kneeled down next to her.

“Shit, Olive.” He eyed the phone still clutched in her fist. “Did your family say something else?”

Olive shook her head and hiccuped in an almost comically pitiful way. It was a testament to how much Derek felt bad for her today that he didn’t laugh at the ridiculous sound.

She held up the phone to him.

He flopped down beside her again. “Spill everything, Olivia, or I’m not sharing the cheese fries.”

“I do really want those cheese fries.” She sniffled but then laughed in spite of herself. “Jalapeños and bacon?”

“Yeah.” He grabbed a box of tissues from the side table and took it under his arm so he could bring her the bribery greasy potatoes and napkins.

Olive stared at the box of tissues. It was one of the boxes Stella had bought her during her pneumonia. It wasn’t even the generic kind. She’d bought her name-brand tissues. The memory made her erupt into another round of tears.

Frowning, Derek opened the fries and handed her one. The starch and salt were basically the best comfort food ever created and were exactly what she needed. Fuck, she was lucky to have Derek.

“Since the tissue box just made you lose it more, I feel like you just need to get it all out. What the hell happened?”

She blew her nose once and then every detail from the night of the party came out.

Derek listened without interrupting, and when she finished the story, he stared at her for several seconds.

“Well, shit. You guys goddamn Spider-Manned each other.”

“What?”

“The classic film moment of our youth in which Tobey Maguire leaves Kirsten Dunst in—I think—a graveyard after breaking up with her for her own good. Jesus Christ.”

“No… that’s not what happened—”

“You didn’t tell her you loved her because you thought you hold her back. She didn’t fight for you because she really thinks that she hurts everyone she dates and she had just hurt you after what happened with the photos and Lindsay. She literally said that.” He chomped on a fry for dramatic effect. “Spider-Manned.”

“No…” She took her hair out of the neat bun and rubbed the areas of tension on her scalp as she processed his words.

“Stella clearly loves you but has never been in love before and was completely freaking out about it and her past and because you were just mind-fucked—and not in a sexy way—by Lindsay you couldn’t hear what she was trying to tell you.”

Bewildered, Olive replayed the conversation several more times before the weight of what he said sank in.

“You really think she loves me? She didn’t want to hurt me so she was afraid of a relationship?”

“Yes, you idiot.” He threw out his hands in exasperation. Only Derek would call her an idiot on the day of her brother’s funeral and have it be exactly what she needed. “Jesus, did she really say that sappy-ass thing about magic and sparks?” He rolled his eyes.

“Yes…”

“She loves you.” He patted her knee once and then grabbed his phone. “So, what are you going to do about it?” While she sat speechless, he typed and swiped on the screen and then grimaced. “Also, apparently the term Spider-Manning means something very different on Urban Dictionary, and now I’m going to get some really weird targeted ads. Don’t look it up. But, yeah, back to Stella. Plan?”

---