Page 22 of The Fate Of Us

I keep it for days like today, when I catch the girl who broke my heart staring at me from dark corners, which ignites my soul and bubbles up the feelings I still have for her. I keep it for when our conversations become friendly and just one too many pleasant smiles are exchanged.

I keep it to stop myself from falling in love with her all over again.

Inside this box is the Polaroid of Addy and Asher. Kissing. The one I found on a random afternoon at Sunfall. The day she told me she didn’t have feelings for him, and that their relationship was purely platonic and strictly professional.

I believed her until I saw this. I want to believe her every time I dream about it too.

I shake off the lid, minding the cloud of dust that floats off it, and my eyesimmediately lock on to the picture. Unlike if I’d seen them kissing with my own two eyes, the only way time could damage this would be how it’s fading, how the corners have yellowed, ageing it. I could still clearly make the two of them out.

Asher faded into the background easily; he wasn’t a priority. My eyes only wanted tolook at her. I could recognise that ball of wavy flames anywhere, even with the watermarks that were now melted onto it.

She had on a blue cotton dress, which always made her hair pop and little ballet flatsthat had tiny bows on the front. She truly was a firefly.MyFirefly.

“I kinda dig that.”is what she said the first time I called her that.

I feel a tightness start to form in my chest the more my eyes stay on her, my nerveendings dipping in rage.Even though I could recognise that face anywhere, pick out that wild hair from anycrowd, somehow I can’t remember her.

As I run my finger along the left side of the photo, where she was sitting, I can recall just how much seeing this for the first time hurt me.My heart sank to a depth I didn’t know was possible. The tears that breached my eyesstung. My arms went weak, like what I was holding weighed the same as the earth.

It was always in the back of my mind that I was crazy for thinking she had feelingsfor a boy like Asher. He was rude, arrogant, and someone who she called a ‘jerk weasel’ the second he left the restaurant that night. I’d casually asked her once or twice whether he was her type, to which she replied with a scoff or ‘hell no’, easing those doubts that had no right to even be in my head.

But seeing this? It took me back. It made me question and second-guess myself into afit of panic. Through the burning in my chest, I asked myself whether I’d been too in love with her to see who she really was, whether she saw me as more of a friend, whether I’d been stupid to assume we could be more friends in the first place—

I slammed the lid back on the box, and without thinking, I stormed out of the room,taking the damned box with me and returning it to its shelf.

And for the first time since moving in here, I locked the office door, lodging the keyunderneath it, forgetting it ever existed.

Chapter nine

Adaline

Contrarytomostofthe planet’s population, I love Mondays.

Truly love them.

Monday’s are the one day a week I request off in my schedule. Some productioncompanies argue it for a while, before realising that they’d rather keep Adaline Moore in their movie and not have her one day a week, than not have her at all.

But Sebastian, as expected, was a saint about it. He told me that he shared a peculiar lovefor Mondays, too, meaning my Mondays for the next four months were solely mine. I practically floated out of bed this morning when I remembered what today was, like Tinkerbell had snuck into my apartment during the night and poured buckets and buckets of pixie dust all over me.

Growing up, Mondays were my least favourite days. It meant the start of a new week.And where that day should have been full of childlike wonderment and optimism, it had been replaced by a too-mature-for-my-age mindset and already knowing I’d hate that week more than the last.

Sure enough, no matter how much I tried to convince myself that this time would bedifferent… that week would be a blur of audition rooms, long drives and late nights. Of course, as he was only next door, Nate would find ways to cheer me up and brighten up the week, because he was sweet like that. He’d throw stones up at my attic window whenever I came home, we’d hideaway in the cover of the cherry blossom bushes in his backyard and he’d make me tell him everything, so I wouldn’t keep it locked away in my mind.

But I’m not thinking about him right now. I don’t want to.

Like I said, Mondays were all mine.

So now, Mondays were my day to do what I wanted. To start the week how I wanted. To not goby anyone else’s schedule but my own. I think it’s what keeps me from spiralling, to be honest. I’m pretty sure without these days, without the weird sense of freedom that took over my body the second midnight rolled around, I’d have more time to dwell on how in denial I am about my job, how much I lie about loving it.

But those thoughts weren’t for my Monday. I had better plans.

After reading a chapter or two of whatever smutty sensation was invading my nightstand, I scrolled through my go-to playlist and picked out the songs I wanted to soundtrack my morning. It was usually something country, the occasional Taylor Swift song that ignites my love for being a woman, and plenty of Dolly Parton. Whatever it was, it was loud enough to drown out the native New York sounds that still managed to sneak through the cracks in the window.

Tiptoeing, I made my way over to my vanity, being careful not to let my feet feel the coldof the hardwood floor, before falling into the spinny chair I kept here and losing myself in my reflection. All the while belting out whatever song has come on shuffle. Right now, it was the Carrie Underwood song that I’d memorised after what happened with Nate.

I don’t know what it was about country music that made me feel a certain type of way. Itvery well could have been the fact that I may or may not have been through a phase where I wanted to be a cowgirl after playing one in an indie movie a few years back.

Which may have led me to write a cowboy romance novel too.

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