Page 96 of Follow Your Bliss

“Of course, baby, you’re always welcome here.” Heather grabbed a tissue box off the wooden coffee table and pulled several out, handing them to me.

When I could speak again, I told them both what happened. “He said he loved me, but that was a lie. Just like he’d lied to his mom about us. I’d started to think I was serious about him. That I might…love him.” The words tasted both foreign and true on my tongue. “But I could never be serious about someone who treated me like that.”

Abby’s blue eyes met Heather’s brown eyes, and the latter took a long breath to speak.

“I know, I know,” I said. “I need to get him out of my mind and move on. It just really hurts tonight, you know?”

Heather shook her head. “No, I don’t think you should make any decisions tonight. I’ll move your stuff into your old room and make you a bath and the most luxurious bed I can put together. The whole thing’s just gonna suck, but you might have a clearer head tomorrow.”

“I don’t need a clearer head. I need to put him behind me. It all happened so fast anyway. It’s not like we were gonna get married or anything.” The pictures we took playing bride and groom rose in my mind’s eye, and I started crying all over again.

“Is putting him behind you what you really want?” Abby rubbed my back and handed me another tissue. “He—”

My phone started blasting The Bee Gees, “More Than a Woman.” I reached over and shut it off. “And he won’t stop texting me. ‘I’m sorry, Rose,’” I said in an unkind mockery of his deep voice. “‘Come back, Rose.’”

“He apologized?” Abby asked.

“Repeatedly. But they’re empty words. Like his ‘I love you.’ He doesn’t mean any of it.”

Heather grabbed up my phone. “What could he do to show you he meant it?”

I sputtered. “Do something about it. Stand up to his mom. Stand up for me. Take some kind of action to show me he understands how I feel and…that I really am important to him.”

She glanced at me and went back to my phone. “All I can see is the preview, but it says, ‘I told Becca everything, and I sent screenshots of Misty’s texts to Mom. She’s out of the wedding. You never have—’ and it cuts off.”

I laughed unkindly. “So glad I busted my ass to get her dress altered.”

Abby shrugged. “But at least he did the right thing. Finally. And you don’t have to see her at the wedding.”

“Oh, I’m not standing in the wedding. I might not even go. I was supposed to walk with him down the aisle. Can you imagine?”

Heather set my phone face-down on the coffee table. “Where does Jason fall in your levels?”

I closed my eyes, grateful for the shorthand between old friends. “I’ve been asking myself this since last weekend. He’s not a One. I mean, the sex wastranscendent, oh my God. But we meant so much more to each other than that.”

“You’d said he was a strong Two,” Abby gently supplied.

I nodded. “We’re friends, no doubt. We play together, support each other. We laugh all the time when we’re together. Life was justgoodandeasywith him.”

Jason was right. There wasso much moreto us. The look in his eyes when he told me he loved me made me panic. Because I knew deep in my soul, even then, that I loved him, too.

I loved Jason. With everything that I was.

“He’s a stupid Three!” I wailed. “How did this happen? I know better than this.”

Abby handed me more tissues. “Having a fight doesn’t always mean a friendship or a relationship is over. And it sounds like he took some baby steps. If you really love him, you owe it to yourself to get all the information you can about the situation before you make any kind of permanent decision. What if he’s the love of your life? You can’t just cut him off. Right, Heather?”

Heather sighed. I hated that heartache haunted her pretty dark eyes. Her ex left her at the altar for a bridesmaid almost seven years ago, and I still wanted to punch him in the balls.

“I shouldn’t weigh in,” she said. “But I do think some time apart from him is a good idea. And like Abby said, don’t cut him off cold. He’s trying.”

Abby nodded. “You went from friends to living together and in love in only a few weeks. That has to be overwhelming for you both. Maybe the distance will help you clarify how you feel about him.”

I clutched my best friends closer. Their squishing me was a comfort, but it made me miss Jason even more. I wanted him to comfort me. I missed how hot his body always ran, and how he always gravitated to where I was in the church, even if it was just to sit near me while I read or sewed, or to drop a kiss on my head as he went past. I even smelled like him now, or at least this amalgam of me and him.

Heather and Abby made a big fuss over getting me comfortably situated in my old room and tried to cheer me up with dinner and conversation. But I took my bath and went to bed early. The murmur of my friends talking low in the kitchen comforted me even more than the plush bed Heather made for me. I needed sleep, but first I pulled out my phone. Missed calls from Mom and Lily. Five missed calls from Jason, a voicemail, and a long string of texts. Besides the bit about Becca and Misty, his texts were increasing amounts of groveling, which I perversely enjoyed. I took a deep breath and listened to the voicemail.

Baby, please say something. Anything. I called your mom and Lily looking for you, but they don’t know where you are. Now I made them worry, too. If something happened to you because of me—

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