Page 141 of Come Break My Heart Again

Mrs. Scott sighs. “Morning detention is in the cafeteria. Head down there, please.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Ryder stands and walks toward the door. He doesn’t look at me as he passes by, but there’s a flutter of white that flashes in the air and then lands on my desk.

He folded me a flower.

“Was he bothering you?” Mrs. Scott asks as soon as Ryder disappears.

“No,” I say, then slip the flower off my desk very carefully.

My eyes fly wide open, the darkened surroundings of my bedroom registering gradually. I’m not fourteen, inside Fernwood High School. I’m twenty-five—almost twenty-six—and in my bed.

I sit up, the sheets pooling around my waist as I scrub both hands across my face.

I miss Ryder.

I miss him even though I shouldn’t. Even though I don’twantto miss him.

Part of me has missed him ever since that morning he wandered into the classroom where I was waiting—our first conversation. Like some alchemy took place during that brief conversation and changed me forever. Like there was a mebeforeRyder and a meafterRyder. And no matter how much time passes or what else changes in my life, I’m stuck with whatever shift took place that moment he spoke to me, crossing the imaginary line between us up until that point.

Groggy and sad and still stuck in the head of my younger self falling in love for the first time, I open the drawer beside my bed.

The eleven-year-old origami flower has held up remarkably well. This flimsy piece of notebook paper fared a lot better than our relationship did.

I twirl the stem between two fingers, attempting to muster the urge to destroy it in some way.

Protecting this piece of the past is unhealthy. Makes me a masochist.

Eleven years. That’s how long it’s been since I met Ryder James. It feels like a lifetime.

And the longer I stare at the flower, the more certain I become that I’ll never get rid of it.

I hate the ending. But I love our story.

I grab my phone off the bedside table with my free hand, giving my alarm clock a cursory glance.

3:07 a.m.

I tap his name and then hold the phone up to my ear to listen to it ring, not caring it’s the middle of the night.

Ryder answers on the third ring. “Hi.”

That’s all he says. He doesn’t ask why I’m calling or mention how late it is. He doesn’t bring up any part of our last—loud—conversation.

I say nothing at all. This was about actions, not words. Wanting to call him. Wondering if he’d answer.

Eventually, I lie back down and tug the sheets up my chest, listening to the silence on his end. Staring at the paper flower.

There’s so much between us. An ocean of love and hate and giddiness and resentment.

It feels too vast to even approach. I don’t know where to wade in.

I’m mad at him about so much. Yet no matter how much anger builds or burns, he’s still the one person I want to talk to in the middle of the night.

“Sixteen,” Ryder says.

“What?”

“You took sixteen breaths in the last minute.”

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