The final puzzle piece I’ve been searching for appears before me. It’s a little damaged on the edges from being tossed around and neglected for too long, but it’s the perfect fit. And as I press it into place, the entire picture takes shape.
“I love him,” I whisper, his solemn face from earlier clear in my mind. When he gazed down at me beside my car, his expression full of sorrow and yearning and … love. “I love him,” I repeat a little louder this time.
The hurt, the ache, the swelling beyond its limits, and the fragile rice-paper feelings I’ve put my heart through. It all makes sense.
“I love him,” I moan this time, setting my phone in my lap and dropping my head into my hands. “I have to tell him.”
Emil and Micah let out soft laughs, and Millie cries through hers.
Hope swells like a balloon in my chest. I want to tell him. I want to shout it from the rooftops and scream it into the woods.
He’s my person. He’s my Gavin. He’smine. And I love him.
But from the highest of highs comes a shattering crash when I realize what I’m skipping over.
My friends.
“But,” I start. “No one lives in the same place.”
“Lena, listen to me,” Millie says. It’s not a mom voice this time. It’s a gentle best-friend voice that reminds me of myself. This is how I sound when I’m giving her advice. “You chase your happy. You deserve it. This, right now, is your chance to be selfish. Don’t think about us. Think about you.”
Micah joins in, saying, “Not your house. Not your job applications. Think about yourheart’shome. Where is that?”
The answer is immediate.
With Gavin. That’s where it belongs. Now and forever.
“But if I move, I’ll miss you,” I tell them, the tears starting anew.
“Oh, honey,” Millie soothes. “We will miss you too. But you deserve this. You deserve to be selfish. You’ve fought for us and encouraged us, but now you’re going to fight for yourself.”
“But Ave and El are—”
“Going to come visit you,” Millie finishes. “With their aunt Millie and uncle Finn.”
A laugh hiccups out of me.
“And Uncle Micah and Uncle Emil,” Micah adds.
“Those girls sure have a lot of aunts and uncles,” Emil says with a laugh.
“A two-hour drive is a piece of cake,” Millie adds. “It takes us longer than that to get the girls ready for bed most days. Or if we want to meet halfway in Fern River, we can do that too! We’re there at least once a month visiting my family, and we can just loop you into that trip.”
A soft smile grows over my lips as I let that idea absorb into my mind. Park trips and coffee shops and walks and visits with Millie’s parents and sisters.
It could work, right?
A knock rattles the window next to me, startling a screech from my throat.
But when I turn my head, Gavin’s wide, whiskey eyes greet me through the dim window. He’s scanning my body quickly, his jaw tight.
“Gavin’s here,” I hiss to my best friends.
“Oh shit,” Millie squeals.
“He looks all disheveled,” I tell them, surveying his wind-blown hair and flushed cheeks that give the impression he ran the ten miles into town.
He tries the door handle, but it’s locked, so he presses his palm to the window, concern etched across his brow.
