I’m still not good enough for her, but leaving her behind didn’t fix that the first time.
three
. . .
Violet
“You’re this shaken up by him? How?”
The question lands like a dart to the chest, but Whitley’s tone isn’t sharp. It’s puzzled. Protective. Worried, really, which always makes it harder to brush off.
Our condo is quiet, the kind that settles in after the world outside finally slows down. A lamp glows in the corner, casting everything in warm light and softening the edges of the space we’ve made ours. There’s a stack of mail on the kitchen counter we’ve both been ignoring, a pair of Whitley’s shoes kicked off near the door, and a blanket that definitely belongs folded neatly over the back of the couch but somehow always ends up with me.
She’s perched on the edge of the armchair, brow furrowed. I’ve cocooned myself on the couch, half buried beneath that same blanket, a crinkled bag of peach rings balanced on my stomach. My fingers fish one out, and I shoot her a look before biting off the orange half.
The sugar hits my tongue, almost too sweet—nothing like the heaviness sitting in my chest. Which is the point.
Whitley became my person in college, the one I never saw coming. We ended up as roommates, just two lost souls throwntogether by some cosmic accident. Somewhere between late-night study sessions and mornings soaked in coffee and regret, she became my emergency contact and my anchor, and then my permanent roommate when she moved back to my hometown with me after college.
She’s all snappy words, big feelings, and built of instinct and fire. Her copper-red hair tumbles in waves around her shoulders, and she has intense eyes that cut through the bullshit and see people for who they really are.
She doesn’t mean to hurt me with her question. She never does. But I can hear the disbelief in her voice, the confusion that I still let someone like him have this much space in my head after all this time.
I pop the rest of the peach ring into my mouth to buy myself a few seconds.
“I got out of that exam room as fast as I could,” I mutter around the chew. “Left Rowan with Dr. Langford and just…bolted.”
Whitley’s leg stops bouncing. I feel her eyes on me, but I don’t look up.
“What’s he even doing back here?” she asks.
I finally look up, meeting her eyes. “No idea. I didn’t exactly stick around to chat.”
Her eyes narrow, lips pressing into a thin line. “That stupid man. I swear, I should slap him. You’re pining for him after all these years when all he did was prance other girls around in front of you when you were in high school. And you’restillin love with him.”
I sigh, pulling the blanket tighter around me. “It was a long time ago. We were just kids. It’s ancient history.”
“Ancient history, my ass,” she mutters under her breath. “I know that look in your eyes. Seeing him again brought it all back, didn’t it? And you’re stress eating those impossible to chew peach things. That is absolutely your telltale sign.”
Dang it. It doesn’t even matter that I’ve had years of growing,of learning to stand on my own. Because when I let myself sink into the memory of him, there’s that tragic, romantic part of me that still feels like that girl who couldn’t even look him in the eye without turning five shades of red. The girl who sat three rows behind him in algebra, pretending to copy equations while actually memorizing the way his shoulders moved when he leaned over his desk. The girl who waited for some sign, some signal that maybe he saw her the same way.
And I never quite stopped hoping.
The girl who clung to every casual smile he threw her way, every joke tossed over his shoulder like it was meant just for her, who secretly believed that it meant something.
I want to believe I’ve outgrown her and that the woman I am now—twenty-four, gainfully employed, rent-paying, mostly put-together—wouldn’t fall apart just because Rowan looked at her like no time had passed.
But today proved me wrong.
Suddenly, I was a teenager again, awkward, wide-eyed, and reckless with hope, with a stomach full of butterflies and a heart full of all the things I never said. It’s like stepping into an old version of myself I thought I’d left behind. She’s still here, lingering in the corners of my heart, waiting for him to make the same mistake again.
Whitley lets out a sharp exhale and slumps into the armchair, dragging a hand through her wild waves. “Jesus, Violet,” she mutters, her voice softer but threaded with that dry, exasperated affection she reserves for me. “You really were down bad for this guy, huh?”
I groan, shoving another ring into my mouth like that might help me smother all the stupid, painfully vivid memories. “It’s just been a phase. A decade-long, emotionally stunted, very quiet phase.”
“Mmhmm. And you just happened to phase yourself right into a minor crisis the second you laid eyes on him again.”
“I didn’t expect him to look like…that,” I mutter, trying tohide behind the fabric of the blanket. “My brain just…short-circuited.”
