Page 44 of Salvaged Heart
“You were awake the whole time, weren’t you?”
He chuckled sleepily.Asshole.
“I’ll be back in a little bit. There’s something I need to do.” I kissed his forehead before grabbing my phone off the charger and heading downstairs.
I hadn’t touched it in days. There were several missed calls and messages from Laurel, all saying some variation of “Call me.” I sighed and tapped her name. It rang twice before she sent it to voicemail, but a FaceTime call immediately rang back. I took a deep breath and answered it. Her pretty face filled the screen.
“So your phone isn’t broken then?” Yeah, I deserved that. It had probably been a week since we last spoke, at least four days since I’d responded to one of her texts. She'd even sent me an email yesterday, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a letter arrived in the mail a few days from now.
“Sorry, babe, we’ve been swamped.” It wasn’t a lie, but I couldn’t pretend there wasn’t plenty of downtime as well.
“So busy you couldn’t send a simple sign of life. I was tempted to drive over there this weekend to make sure you and Anders hadn’t killed one another.”
I laughed. “Believe me, he is very much alive.”
“Driving you crazy, then?”
That statement was more accurate than I would ever tell her, but not in the way she’d meant it. Anders was all I thought about these days: how to make him happy, what he was thinking, how to coax just one more smile out of his perfect face. I was all spun up. “Something like that.”
Silence fell between us. My mind had been made up for days, but now the time had come to take that final plunge, I was scared. I knew what I was doing was right. Even taking Anders out of the equation, I knew our relationship had run its course. This wasn’t me trading her in for him, but boy, it felt like that. If I even wanted the possibility of exploring what Anders and I could be, Ihadto do this. If I wanted to know what I could make of my life without her telling me what my dreams were, I had to rip the bandaid off, once and for all.
“Laurel, there’s something I need to tell you.” I started right as she said, “Beck, we need to talk.”
‘Well, that doesn’t sound good.”
“Neither did that.” She laughed nervously. “Look, Beck. I don’t know how to say this, so I will just come out with it.”
Was she breaking up with me?
“Things have felt off between us for a while now, and I hoped spending the summer together would fix some of it, but being forced to spend time apart has been eye-opening.”
“Eye-opening…” I parroted.
“This is bad timing, I know, but… I met someone else.”
Oh.
I couldn’t deny that her confession didn’t hurt a little, but I had done the same. I’d kissed Anders–her brother of all people–on multiple occasions, let him touch me, tried to touch him. There wasn’t a lot of ground for me to stand on.
“Nothing’s happened. We've hardly talked, but there’s a mutual attraction there, and it’s made me realize that you and I have grown a lot since high school. But, um, I’m not sure we have been growing in the same direction.” She sighed, glancing down. “I think maybe you’ve felt it, too?”
I felt disorientated looking at her say all the words I'd intended to say myself.
“I spoke to Margery a few days ago. She agreed to help me pay you out for all the work you’ve done on the manor. We can get a contractor in to finish the rest.”
I cleared my throat to speak, but she was still talking a mile a minute.
“I don’t want you to think I used you, Beck. I hadn’t planned any of this when we made plans to spend the summer there. Life just happened, and it’s not fair to either of us for me to drag things on. I hope we can eventually remain friends, but I understand if that’s impossible.” She finished, finally catching her breath.
“Can I talk now?”
She nodded.
“You’re right. I’ve felt it, too. When I called, I'd planned on being the one to say all that.” I tried not to latch on to how typical of her it was to beat me to the punch. “So, I guess… no hard feelings. But I’d like to stay and finish the project. There are only a few weeks of work left anyway, and I think I’ve decided to follow in my Dad’s footsteps. This renovation will look great on my resume. Plus, this is what friends do, right?”
“Large-scale renovation projects for free?” She chuckled before her face turned serious again. “Was that just the easiest breakup ever?”
“Yeah, I think it was.”
