Page 66 of Our Hearts Knew Better

I find my phone that had fallen through a crack—with me, like I knew I’d have to call her, my big breaths rapid, then calming once she answers.

I sniffle and she’s quiet, waiting, and I just start talking.

“I do love him.”

Clarissa sighs. “I know. But were you ever in love with him?”

I switch my phone to the ear that didn’t hear that. “He was my future when I needed a future,” I say, bringing the blanket to my mouth, muffling the strain in my voice that seems like it’s bouncing off the walls. “We were supposed to be it.” I gaveso muchof myself and my time…my life. “I don’t know what to do,” I confide, letting go, through another welling of tears. “I miss…so much.”

She crunches something that sounds like a chip but is probably a crouton in my ear. “You do know what to do. But you’re scared. You need security, and everyone besides me, the best friend in the world who loves you more than anyone, has taken that from you at least once.”

My nostrils flare at her playfully smug words, my attempt at a smile through the sting.

And love.Love likes to be stolen from me. I really needed love and Adam was the one ready to give me that.

Now…still needing love, always needing love, fucking promises kept. . .

“He’s my first almost everything,” I say next, low, still just talking, because Clarissa, the best friend in the world who does love me more than anyone, is letting me do that.

Another crunch. “Almosteverything. You deserve wholly. One hundred percent.” I’m nodding against the blanket, some of the fuzz rubbing against the phone, trying to believe that again. “And you and Adam aren’t bad together, okay? But you don’t have to settle just because you’re not bad together, and because he won’t leave you physically.”

The force of my back against the chair jolts out my next breath. “I didn’t settle for him,” I cut in quickly, sensing when she’s about to be on a roll, and now, where she’s rolling, the double-edged sword of how well the two of us know each other.

“You’re a romantic who’s needed to be loved and wanted and you think if you let this go, there won’t be another out there. And you don’t want the time you give to be wasted. But you love theotherboy too. And yeah, I’m making the L again in the air with my crouton.”

“I knew it was croutons,” I mutter with a brief feeling of lightness in my chest.

“You fell hard and fast for a different guy when you were seventeen and he fell hard and fast for you too.”

My chest is heavy again as I pick at the blanket. The same thinness as the one he’d covered me with on the Gilligan the first time I got drunk.

“And you deserve to know what happened,” Clarissa tells me, lower. “Normal people don’t whiplash someone’s heart for no reason.”

My splayed book on the floor pokes at my periphery, putting a tease on my tongue. “You’re the perfect side character.”

“You can’t see me, but I’m bowing.”

I smile but it’s just lips. “I hope you get your story one day.”

“Bitch, I’m living it.” She puts on the defense and my chuckle is wet. “When are you going to go back to living yours?”

Rosalee Bay.That’s where my story started.

That’s where theotherboy, whose name begins with an L, still lives, leaving his permanent mark like he left on me, making the town his oyster.

Who’s waiting for me? Not my sick father, who decided to settle in one place after I myself vacated it. And who transitioned from my dad to my father, because he did more than donate his sperm, but he still didn’t earn the title of Dad.

I remember opening my college acceptance letter—Adam’s school, so we could stay together, but it was a good option for me too—and I squealed and shoved it into his face with a dance…expecting pride for his daughter’s success. Still expecting too much.

I’ve since sent him other things over the years, other successes, a conflict between making him proud and showing him how much better off I am without him.

Who else isn’t waiting for me? Not that boy my heart still beats for, I admit, years after he broke it.

Adam wasn’t my first kiss. He wasn’t my first love. He wasn’t my first heartbreak. But he was my first everything else. All because his best friend let me go.

Levi’s always been in my mind, I admit again, dead center after my feelings should’ve died.

Adam gave me sympathy when he found out what happened, then when we started dating, I assured him I didn’t have feelings for Levi anymore. I tried not to. I wanted to make that statement as powerful as the one he used to break me, to make myself whole again, complete for Adam.

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