Page 112 of Make It Without You

“Like I wanna cry every second of every day. But I can’t,” I say as emotion takes over and clogs my throat.

Melissa looks at me the way a mother would comfort a child. “Is there any way you could fix it?”

“Maybe,” I whisper.

I get homefrom work an hour later with a large pepperoni pizza and a bottle of wine tucked firmly in my grasp. I’m walking up the stairs when I see my girls waiting for me in front of my door with two more pizza boxes and a bottle of tequila.

“What are you three doing here?”

“Getting you out of your funk,” Kam declares.

They move aside when I hold up my keys to unlock the door. We all meander inside and head towards the kitchen.

“I’m not in a funk,” I argue back when I set the food down.

“You’re so in a funk!” The three of them yell.

I turn and dump my bags on the chair in the living room and turn towards my girls. “I don’t know what I feel.”

“You’re me in college,” Kamryn says and pours us all chilled shots of tequila ignoring the wine I bought.

Sarah claps her hands which makes me jump. “That’s who you remind me of.”

I move to the kitchen and pick up a shot glass, downing the tequila with barely a wince. Kamryn eyes me warily and I motion for another shot.

“So, I’m in a funk,” I admit after my second shot.

“We know, sweetie. That’s why we’re here.”

I bend over to take my heels off. Anything to keep my hands busy. “I miss Adam. But I’m still working on myself and I heard that he has his court hearing in December. How selfish would I be if I just waltzed back into his life after turning it inside out?”

Jax gathers the boxes of pizza and places them on my dining table. The greasy, delicious smell of pizza beckons me, and I wander to the table and sit. I pick up and chew a slice while the girls take their seats.

“Did you know Mason went to visit Adam at his restaurant?”

“No. When?” I ask Kam.

She puts her half-bitten slice of pizza back in the box and dusts her hands off. “About a week after you two broke up. Mason said he was cold towards him. Which I didn’t think was possible with the way he fawned over him when they first met. But what Mason could tell was that he’s miserable without you.”

I stare into the box of pizza hoping it’ll give me my answer. The traitorous slices give me nothing.

“I don’t even know if he’d want to hear from me,” I whine. I know that’s far from the truth. But I keep seeing his look of defeat that day when I called us off. I vowed to never be the person to put that look on anyone’s face. Yet I did with the man I’m head-over-heels in love with.

“Oh, she figured it out,” someone chimes.

My gaze is unfocused as I think of the steps that are five in front of me instead of the one I need to get to first. “I need to go to his restaurant.”

“Atta, girl,” Sarah says from next to me. “Jax put the pizza in the fridge. We’re going to help Emily get her man back.”

We getto Monty’s and I tell Sarah to park her car next to Adam’s truck. We get out of her car and the girls walk forward but my feet won’t move.

“Em?”

“I’m nervous. And this also feels like a full circle moment for him and me,” I say and pace in the parking lot.

Kamryn rounds back to me and loops her arm through mine. “I know it’s hard.”

“Easy for you to say. You’re wearing the ring,” I note as I look down at the rock on her finger. Mason finally proposed to Kamryn in the house he bought for them a couple of months ago. We all knew it was coming. We just weren’t sure of when.

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