Page 67 of Our Hearts Knew Better

It’s been an ongoing, underlying attempt.

People who knew would say what Levi and I had was a fantasy, but again, that’s not my genre. Everything between us was as real as those beats of my heart, never ending, no time of death.

We didn’t speak to each other for a while after it happened. I personally couldn’t. And I didn’t want to ruin my first relationship by pining in the presence of and for my boyfriend’s best friend. Levi was still around, but even in my space, he gave me space. Until I sucked it up and we were able to hold on to a form of our friendship.

And that book near my feet…I don’t care aboutthatcouple’s life. I care whyourshad to go so wrong. Even more so, I admit again, when things are wrong.

“You can’t changewhathappened,” Clarissa continues to my body rocking thoughts, “but you can change what will happen. Get out of Virginia. Do it for teen Summer. Let me use my vacation time!”

I groan something like a laugh as I drop my head back. Apologies to teen Summer, but adult Summer can’t just leave. I have responsibilities that hang over my head with the gray clouds.

I’m a tech editor for an independently owned company. They bet on me. People and clients, who count on me. They’ve never let me down. And when people who’ve never let you down are counting on you, you don’t have a right to let them down. And it’s people’s time and money. It doesn’t matter if I don’tfeel good. No one feels good.Lifedoesn’t feel good. I might feel hand-picked in my troubles, but I’m not.

“Don’t be down on yourself,” Clarissa tells me now through crunching, “for thinking back on possibility. On what you could’ve had instead. What youshould’vehad instead.”

“How many croutons do you have left?” I ask to distract myself from that thought ofwhat happened, from the answer to why I was taken this direction, having someone else to blame who isn’t me, and still needinghisanswers.

“About half,” she says. “Want me to push you one through the phone? And don’t get off track. You know why you’re going back to that summer.”

I lift my head out of my building neck cramp. I’m reflecting on that summer, because they’re mirrored. And I have to break the glass. I’m going back to remind myself I can change. I can make change, like I did then. I can be brave in the midst of abandonment. I can tell my mom I’mnotafraid, I’m run down.

I’m so run down.

“Okay, that’s part of it, but that’s not all of it,” Clarissa stresses, showing her psychic abilities, right as my thoughts shift back into tiredness, my blurred and aching eyes finding the vase as she teases what this really means. “Twelfth letter of the alphabet…”

The honeysuckles here are fake.

Hereonly has half of my heart. What’s left of it.

Eventually, releasing the rest of this breakdown for a momentary snapback, I thank my best friend, telling her I love her, and wipe at my face, sweeping away sticking tendrils of hair.

With a sigh, I pick myself and the book up, and put both back on their shelf.

As much as that town became a home, as this one did, resentment and pain reside there too. Pick your battles. Nothing’s waiting for me in Rosalee Bay.

I lean my back against the closed bedroom door, my head slowly dropping back too.

Adam chose me. The fight isn’t there, it’s here.

A Little More Happiness

Summer

The next time Adam touches me, a few days have passed. My quick scrubbing of a plate slows when his arm comes around my neck from behind, the other wrapping around my waist as he presses his lips onto the top of my head.

I still completely as he holds me, feeling his heavy but steady breathing at my back and in my hair, his arms tightening like he’s afraid to let me go.

I was held with this fear one other time before.

“I’m sorry.” His mouth moves against my scalp and I brace at the words that sound like an apology before bad news. Worse news.

“Adam, what’s wrong?” I sigh out, from beneath the pile ofwrongI’ve been buried under.

He loosens his hold. “I can’t be sorry?” I slot the cleaned plate into the rack, then dry my hands on a towel as I shift to face him, his arms falling to his sides. He’s always shirtless with the same bedhead. “I am,” he tells me, soft, darkened eyes tired, but more awake today, as they dance between mine. “I’ve been trying to accept it,” he says, as I’m trying to soak in this momentary sorry.

“Accept…?”

“Working for my dad.” He says this like a first acknowledgment as he takes the few steps to lean back against the island.

---