Page 59 of If You Never Come Back
“Shay, can’t we—”
“I’d like to be alone,” I say, cutting him off.
He stands up and heads for the door. It closes softly behind him.
I stare ahead, too numb to do anything else, until hot tears begin to streak down my cheeks. After a while, I gaze around my apartment, taking in the meaningless shapes around me. Then I halt on something black on the floor near my desk. Wes’s backpack.
In his hurry to leave, he must have forgotten it.
I let out a breath and walk to my desk for my phone. I’ll text Remy and ask if he can come get it and give it to Wes so I don’t have to see him again.
But then I trip on the strap of the backpack. I clutch the edge of the desk to steady myself, thankful that I landed on my good foot. Glancing down, I see that the bag is half-open and something fell out when I tripped over it.
When I focus on the stray item, I freeze. It’s a foot-long strip of bright blue streamer—a decoration from the surprise birthday party I threw Wes.
Then I notice something colorful spilling out of the bag. A palm-sized chunk of papier-mâché. A second later, the image registers in my memory bank: it’s a piece of his birthday piñata. He kept it after all this time.
Memories from that day come flooding back. The shock on Wes’s face when he saw Dandy Lime decked out in superhero decorations and party favors. The tears of joy glistening in his eyes. The tender words he spoke to me in the shower after the party.
This time when the tears fall, they’re not of pain or embarrassment or agony. They’re of disbelief. Wes kept these mementos in his hiking backpack that he carried with him every day for the past six months because they meant something to him.
BecauseImeant something to him.
“I, uh, forgot my bag.”
I jerk my head up and see Wes standing over me.
Chapter Nineteen
In my stunned haze, I must not have heard him come back in. When he crouches down next to me, I realize what this scene must look like: me rifling through his belongings.
“I wasn’t—it’s not what it looks like,” I quickly say.
“I know.”
“I tripped over it when I was walking over to my desk and it all just spilled out, I swear.”
His hand falls on my arm. So soft, so gentle. “Shay. It’s okay.”
We both stare at the party favors I clutch in my hands.
“Why did you keep all of this?”
Wes settles next to me. I shift from my squatting position to a sitting one. He gazes at me, renewed intensity in his eyes. And something soft, something familiar, something that reminds me of those perfect months when we were together. Something just for me.
“Because they reminded me of you,” Wes says. “And how I felt about you.”
An invisible rock lodges in my throat, but I swallow around it. “How did you feel about me?”
He pauses to swallow before answering. “I’ve never cared about anyone the way I care about you. When you were happy, I was happy. I lived to see you smile. Every day spent with you was the best day ever.”
When he stops speaking, his words linger in the air around us.
“You were everything to me, Shay. You still are.”
I shake my head, shrugging out of his hold. “Everything isn’t love.”
“I did love you, Shay. I still do.”
