Page 8 of Only in Your Dreams

I’m back here, with barely a penny to my name. With nothing but a few suitcases full of clothes that I didn’t even buy myself, because I’d been constantly spoiled by the man who’s now left me with hardly anything.

“He broke up with me a month ago, right before his trip,” I tell Summer, as she fires up the engine and pulls us away from the curb. “I’ve been staying at our place—hisplace—while looking for my own. And then it became clear I couldn’t afford to live alone, so… here I am.”

“You didn’t have any friends you could crash with?”

Apparently not. There’d been nothing more sobering than getting those couple of texts the week of my breakup. My request for a round of drinks with the women in our circle was met with apologetic yet firm denials, considering howawkward it would beto meet up with me now that Connor and I were no longer together.

I still haven’t stopped shaking up my juice. The sound of sloshing liquid fills the car, hopefully sufficiently drowning out the tremble in my voice as the sting of those texts hits me all over again. “After some reflection, it turned out all my friends in the city are actually his friends. That would have been a little awkward.”

“I’m sorry, Mels,” Summer says with a sympathetic wince. “I remember that grey area after my last break up, trying to divvy up the friend group between me and my ex. It took a while to figure out, but everyone landed where it made sense in the end. I even inherited a couple I thought for sure would side with him, and he got my college roommate in the swap. I’m sure they’ll surprise you.”

Shake, shake, shake.

“No,” I mutter, fixating on the pickup truck overtaking us in the next lane. “I mean that every single one of them started out as his friend, and it’s staying that way. I lost touch with my college friends a while ago.”

Summer tips her head, hair swinging to one side as she follows the up and down trajectory of my bottle before settling back on the road. “Really? What happened?”

“A couple of them moved back across the country after graduation. Connor wasn’t a fan of the rest of them. There were a couple of nights where I went overboard with the cocktails during happy hour.”

I’ll never forget the sheer disappointment in Connor’s face the night I came home teetering in my four-inch heels after a glorious night out with my girlfriends. The mortification I felt when he pointed out I was slurring my words. It culminated in a painful, lengthy lecture the next morning about making sure we surrounded ourselves with trustworthy, responsible friends who wouldn’t let me embarrass myself that way. When I pointed out he was suggesting I drift away from my only friends within a three-hour radius, he folded me into his own circle with the women who’d all go on to side with him in the breakup.

“Did you not have any friends from work, then?” Summer asks now.

I shake my head. “The job he got me was completely remote.”

I can feel Summer’s eyes on me, but when I chance a glance, I find her focused on the road with a small pull to her eyebrows.

“It’s so weird hearing you say all this, Mels. I’ve listened to Parker rant about him for years, but whenever you mentioned Connor, it was all glowing reviews. But everything was on his terms, huh?”

Shake, shake, shake.

Was it?

I eye the road ahead of us, thinking back. Connor always had a vested interest in my life. Made sure I had a good job, was eating well. He spoiled me with my entire wardrobe. Sure, maybe his hobbies became my hobbies. Maybe his friends became my friends.

But isn’t that normal? He was my boyfriend, after all. It’s completely normal to get wrapped up in a relationship, especially over six years.

So, why don’t you miss him, you heartless wench?

We did everything together. Came up with a bucket list of the most outlandishly extravagant restaurants in the city, and picked them off one by one over the years. Travelled everywhere I ever dreamed of going, and then some. The way he smiled over at me that day hiking in Ecuador, with waterfall spray slowly drenching us, nearly tipped me off the edge of that platform.

It’s not that I’m doing okay. I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep in weeks, tossing around, obsessing over this breakup and where it is I went wrong. How did I get someone like Connor, who doted on me so profusely, to walk away without a thought?

I loved him, and I lost him, and I have no idea how. I thought I’d been doing everything right to make him happy.

“What’s this about a trip to South America?” Summer draws me out of my spiral, flicking on the windshield wipers as rain starts to drizzle onto the car.

“Parker’s exaggerating—it had nothing to do with wanting to be single on a boys’ trip. He told me he wasn’t happy anymore.”

She doesn’t seem convinced. “Are his friends single?”

“One of them is. And… and the other just got dumped by his fiancée,” I admit, overheating under my sweater.

Summer doesn’t say anything. Only stares out at the road ahead of us, the thick tree line to our right, the pines sparsely dotting the land off the bay to our left. The sky above dark, threatening a downpour, reflecting every confused thought swirling in my head right now.

Shake, shake, shake.

I clear my throat, forcing a smile. “Well, if that’s really why he did it, I suppose the silver-lining is that he didn’t cheat, right?” I peer out of the window, feeling Summer’s eyes on me again. “And there’s no sense dwelling on it. We aren’t together anymore, and… I’m moving on with my life. Staying positive.”

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