Page 21 of Between the Flames

CHAPTERELEVEN

Two weeks had gone by since message-gate and I was anxious to finish work for the day. Working my way up at The Daily Reader hadn’t been a simple task, being that it was a small newspaper with a team of around twenty, but I had managed to become one of their main writers and I was damn proud of myself for that. I had been putting in long hours and all the extra stress had paid off when I received my promotion last year.

Today had been a tough day creatively for me. My mind wasn’t in it. I was tired, and more than ready for the weekend—which was still a couple of days away. I had just forced myself to refocus rather than just zoning out to music when my email pinged. I glanced at the clock before navigating the mouse over to my email account. My lips pursed in confusion when my inbox reflected no unread messages.

Had I imagined it?

My eyes narrowed, skimming the screen before realizing that my personal email was pulled up in a secondary tab. I clicked over to bring up my personal email and saw the unread message. A gasp fell from my lips when I saw who the message was from, and excitement bloomed in my chest

Sender: [emailprotected]

Subject: A Million Years Later

Hey Elle,

Wow, it’s been a long time! I heard you were back in town. I know it’s a little out of the blue for me to send this email, but I had hoped you would reach out to me once you were settled. That doesn’t seem to be the case since I heard you came back a few years ago, so I wanted to reach out to you and see how you were. I would love to meet up with you and catch up. Could we go for a drink this weekend? Friday? Reggie’s, 7PM?

Let me know your plans. I would love to see you.

I miss you, Elle.

-Noah

A smile crept across my face as I reread the email twice more. It had been a long time since I had seen or talked to Noah and I really did want to catch up with him, but my mind was struggling to process that I had heard from both Ryder and now Noah in the span of just a couple of weeks.

Why now?

And why so close together?

Was it purely coincidence, or were they friends now and had spoken about me? That wouldn’t have been the most off the wall thing considering at one point Noah and Lily had been… uh, friends?

I shook off that possibility, remembering the odd tension in the air when I overheard Noah and Lily’s spat. That was sexual tension, I was sure of it, so the chances of a friendship between Ryder and Noah, especially one where they sat around discussing me, was unlikely. It had to just be coincidence, but I couldn’t stop myself from overthinking yet again.

Losing my friendship with Noah after I left Shadow Hills was something that took me a long time to move past. I hadn’t reached out to him since moving back because I know that I had handled things poorly when I left town—I had been immature and selfish. He had been my best friend and rock throughout my entire childhood and teenage years, but something about me moving so suddenly after graduation had him acting strangely toward me and frankly, the bitterness was ugly on him. So I made the rash decision to leave without saying goodbye, heated in the argument we had two days before I left.

Could I have handled it better?

Uh, yeah.

Did I though?

Nope.

Noah had begged me to stay a few more weeks into summer, but I refused; the night of graduation was a painful memory I was desperate to flee. He had called me selfish and said some other choice words about my decision, so in a rush of teenage hormones I acted irrationally, giving him a giant middle finger by leaving without so much as a goodbye.

To say that strained our friendship would be an understatement. I could now count how many times we had spoken since on one hand. Spoiler alert, it was a big fat zero.

For years, it had felt like a giant piece of me was missing, but I just couldn’t bring myself to rebuild the bridge after I moved back. Instead, I forced myself to constantly look forward. I had to in order to survive the fallout. Never look back, always forward.

Truthfully, after I moved back, I was just too nervous to reach out despite how many times I wanted to. I drafted email after email, and dialed his old phone number so many times, but never had the guts to push send or connect the call. The Elle I had been the last few weeks before I left was not the Elle that I am today, and whenever I thought of Noah, I found it difficult to separate the two Elles, so I slapped a Band-Aid over the festering wound that was our not-so-forgotten friendship and pushed forward.

With my fingers hovering over the keyboard, I thought purposefully about what I wanted to say back to Noah. There were so many words left unspoken that I felt like I needed to carefully craft this email. My heart was pounding so rapidly in my chest that my head started to feel floaty and my palms started sweating again.

I let out a shaky breath as I reread the email a few times, that agreed to drinks, before finally hitting send. It was short, but to the point. We would have to hash everything out on Friday night, and I realized in that moment how much I hoped that the fragments of our old friendship would still be visible when we saw each other again. Noah was a piece of the puzzle that had been missing and I hadn’t realized until now how desperate I was to have his friendship back.

Knowing that there was zero chance of refocusing on my work for the day, I slammed my laptop shut and started cleaning up my desk so that I could head home.

I let my mind wander back to the memory of graduation night as I made my way to my car. It was the first time in a long time I let the thoughts of Ryder from that night invade my head, and sadness pulled at my heart. The sadness quickly dissipated as anger overtook, burning fiercely within me for allowing myself to still pine over a guy who I had never even kissed. A guy who I had not only never kissed, but a guy who had a wife and a child—maybe even a couple of children by this point. He was never even mine to begin with, yet the feelings were still buried within me.

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