Page 136 of Summertime Friends

It’s taken me twenty minutes to move from the produce section of Trader Joe’s to the dairy section. There are only four items in my basket.

I stopped on my way home from work, planning to pick up ingredients to make pad thai at home and enough snacks and wine to fill my weekend. I know it’s going to be a lonely one. Chloe left this morning, traveling for work till Monday. Without speaking to Natalie or Liam, I’m not sure what I’ll do besides run, read, and stuff my face with the peanut butter-filled pretzel nuggets I dropped in my basket.

Five days have passed since everything went down between Liam, Natalie, and me. I haven’t spoken to either of them. Not for their lack of trying. Both have called and texted me enough that you could consider it stalking. Natalie even employed Chloe to try to convince me to talk to her. Without trying to put Chloe even more in the middle, I tell her that I need time. Because time can fix this, right?

Chloe is refusing to pick a side outwardly. I value that because I know she is seeing clearer in this situation than I am. However, I can tell if she were to pick one, it would be for me to get over myself and under Liam. She keeps telling me that he isn’t to blame. After leaving Natalie’s, I found Chloe at a tattoo shop getting anew tattoo that looks similar to one that Callum has on his butt. When I asked her about it, she smiled and shrugged her shoulders. Then went back to telling me that I was blowing Liam’s part in all this out of proportion.

I told her everything. How the weekend was serendipitous. When looking at Liam, all I felt was an overwhelming sense of love and that I wanted to tell him. I planned on professing my feelings to him in the car, but Natalie came up instead.

There’s an opening in the aisle I need to go down. Walking down the aisle with pasta and sauces, I accidentally bumped into someone’s cart, who was paying more attention to the shelves than where I was going.

“Oh, sorry,” we both say at the same time.

I look up to see Liam standing there.

My heart about jumps out of my chest seeing him. I’ve missed him.

I quickly look away and turn around to go down a different aisle. I can come back to this one later.

“You’ve been avoiding me,” Liam says, following me.

I muffle a laugh.Shouldn’t have thought you’d get away from him, Emerson.

It hasn’t been easy to get away from him this week. Liam meant it when he said he’d catch me.

Flowers on my desk Monday morning.

Hot black coffee in hand, waiting outside my building on Tuesday to take the train with me to work. Giving me his umbrella when we got off because I forgot mine and it was raining.

I found a package in the mailroom on Wednesday containing a camera lens. I had told him last week I’d debated buying it. Attached was a note saying to use it for the opening of his hotel next week and that he can’t wait to have me as a part of this big day.

On Thursday, I found him stretching in the lobby of my apartment building, waiting to join me for my run. When I walked upto him, he kissed me on the cheek and asked if he could join. He didn’t talk to me during the run, and when we got back, he kissed my other cheek, told me he loved me, and kept running.

There hasn’t been anything today, though I have been waiting. After Monday, I was eager to see what he would do next. Just because I needed to figure out how to work through the deception didn’t mean I stopped loving him.

That’s an impossible feat. Once I started, I never fully stopped. I may have let it go for some time, but it didn’t leave me. When someone is the love of your life—or, like me, the loss of your life, I don’t think it is possible to ever unlove them. You can pause, find someone else, or ignore the beat of your heart that is them—but that doesn’t mean you don’t have a microscopic amount of love for them. I’m pretty positive first loves are like this, too.

And I’m screwed because Liam is my trifecta. He will always be option D, all of the above.

I try to move around him, but he sidesteps to stay in my way, using his cart to block my pathway. We stand there fighting each other with our eyes. He stares into my soul, his lips rising into a smile as if it’s his sword. Mine are a shield firmly placed in front of the entranceway into everything I’m feeling.

I lose the fight by breaking eye contact and waving the white flag with a single blink. “I haven’t been avoiding you. I told you in the car; I don’t know if we can do this.”

“Emerson,” he replies and reaches out to touch my cheek. I turn away from him, not wanting to feel the ache that will come from his touch.

“Liam, you lied to me,” my voice sounds protective.

“I didn’t lie.”

“Semantics. You didn’t tell me about Natalie.”

“I already told you, Emerson, I thought you knew. You never brought it up, so I didn’t.”

“What then? We were supposed to go about together and you two would never have told me?” I let out a big sigh.

“I’spose. I don’t see it as a big deal.”

“Not a big deal?! My best friend and the guy I—you two had this whole plot, pulling strings you shouldn’t have been pulling.”

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