Page 85 of Break Your Fall

“Yep,” Camille says as she opens her box. “He was back over the trash this morning, griping about howshe’sbeen inside his mouth for months and his teeth feel lost without her soft bristles.”

I laugh despite myself, stepping closer now. “What?”

She nods, then mocks Banks’s words. “Apparently, theybonded.”

“Uh huh,” I say, hearing the pointed tease in my voice. “Well, you paid a lot of attention to what he was doing for someone who hates him.”

Tommy laughs, a mischievous knowing stare on me as he tells Camille, “Reyna’s on a mission to prove we secretly like Banks.”

“Well, good luck with that,” Camille says with a snort, her utensils packet crinkling in her hands as she excuses her attention on Banks. “It’s hard not to notice a freak show.”

Tommy moves to the back cupboards, alone and away from Camille, and the fidgety feeling that’s been swimming through my limbs jolts me forward to meet him.

“Thank you for stopping me,” I say, and his hand pauses on the cupboard knob as his eyes lock to mine, last night coloring his face the same as it had colored mine. “If we ever do—” My voice cuts off and I’m unable to say the rest, but the last of my words that he needs to hear come out low and heavy. “I don’t want it to be like that, either.”

Tommy’s hand slides from the knob as he shifts his body toward me, and I realize I’ve just made a promise, divulged a desire, and in words as low and heavy as mine, he answers with a plan.

“It won’t be.”

Time moves fast and I move slow. I can’t seem to keep up as my hands take and make orders, add sprinkles, fill cups and cones. A few cones break apart between my fingers and I have to start over.

That fidgety feeling hasn’t left me since I tried to leave it behind at the Holloway guest house. I couldn’t walk it off on the way to my house. I couldn’t wash it off in the shower, blow dry it from my hair, cover it up with mascara and gloss, eat it away with the breakfast Camille had brought for me.

I can’t work it away at my job. Shelby has had to check in with me more than once.

There are moments where I’m all over the place, getting too ahead of myself and mixing up orders, and there are moments where I’m standing still, voices around me garbled like I’m under water, content with drowning.

Either I have an incessant smile on my face, or I’m a deer in headlights.

You’re about to gain everything you’ve always wanted.

The life that I’ve known could be ending, with a new life waiting for me to turn the corner. I can’t understand how one person can be so scared and so confused, so elated and so eager, all at the same time. It’s like the sun is out, high in the sky, hidden behind a cluster of gray clouds.

I am the storm.

And I am the sun.A daylight girl.

And what do you get when the two merge? The rainbow.

There I am,I think with a sigh, feeling closer to myself than I have all night and all morning.

I just have to hold on to the rainbow.

“You can go home.” Shelby’s voice floats through my head. “Maybe get some rest?”

I take in the concerned bend in her brows, then glance around the shop—empty of customers. Out the windows, the sun has set over the water, the sign on the glass door flipped to CLOSED.

The day is gone and now I have to trek through the night.

“Thanks,” I say with a nod, accepting Shelby’s offer to take off, then promising to make this up to her.

“What happened today?” she asks me as I move out from behind the muggy counter.

“What isn’t happening,” I hear myself breathe as I reach the door, waving to Shelby over my shoulder as I breeze through the exit, ready for a release, ready to cry.

But I don’t cry until I make it to my bedroom.

I notice the letters first. The box resting on my bed. Then Tommy sitting next to it, close to the pillows. Camille sits at the foot, with Julian next to her, a couple spaces back near the opposite end.

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