Her hair is in my mouth, copper ringlets stuck to my tongue, and although she’s barely tall enough to ride a rollercoaster, she has the upper body strength of a woman who is used to carrying around a ninetieth-percentile toddler all day. Her grip on me is steel, but I don’t try to pull back. I breathe her in, her familiar scent, the feel of her arms around me. My very first and very best friend.
“I’m sorry too. I shouldn’t have blown up.” The words are garbled by her hair.
She pulls back. “You had every right. I was stupid, and I shouldn’t have gone to your mom. You were right about everything.”
A grin quirks my lips. “That’s hard to argue with.”
She smiles, too, but there are tears in her eyes, and I can see that this has been weighing as heavily on her as it has on me.
“Can we go inside?”
She nods, moving out of the doorway to allow me inside. “Holden has the kids at his mom’s, so it’s just us.”
I lift a brow. “I’m interrupting your solo, child-free time?”
She points at the shoes on her feet, the ones she’s kicking off. “I was just about to drive to the cabin to find you. I tried giving you space, but I couldn’t do it anymore.”
Warmth glows in my chest, spreading outward and chasing away the cold that’s seeped into my soul.
I follow her into the living room and we take a seat on the wide, leather couch. Outside, the sun is just beginning to set, arcing through the windows that stretch from the ground all the way up to the two-story ceilings. They open onto a deck that faces the mountains. In the distance, when the haze isn’t too dense, you can make out the river that winds through the valleysand deposits into the lake. It’s a stunning view from the coziest, most beautiful home that Holden designed and built himself based on the dreams Wren had in her head.
I love it, but it also makes me ache for something I’ve never quite been able to put my finger on. I’ve always considered myself independent, able to take care of myself and be the person others can rely on instead of the one who needs to rely on others. But this house makes me feel like it wouldn’t be so bad to let someone in, let them do something for me, take care of me in a way that feels intricately entwined with my deepest desires.
“You wouldn’t have found me at the cabin,” I tell Wren. “I’ve been staying at the Airstream.”
Her brows lift, disappearing beneath the fringe of her curly bangs. “Did something happen between you and Jack?”
My bottom lip catches between my teeth, and I gnaw at it. “Nothing happened, but it almost did. And we both wanted something to happen.”
Her eyes widen. “Tell me everything.”
So I do, and it feels sogoodto get it off my chest, to tell my best friend about the guy I have a crush on as she sits across from me, her feet tucked under my legs, her hand pressed to her lips.
When I finish, she says, “Stevie, I’m so sorry about what I said the other day. Everything happened with Jack and then I bombarded you at the worst possible time. You should have hit me in the boob.”
I chortle, and it bounces around the house. “We haven’t had a boob fight since middle school.”
“I haven’t acted that stupid since then either,” she says.
A sigh heaves out of me, and I nudge her with my foot. “You weren’t stupid. You were right.” The realization came to me last night as I was staring up at my glow-in-the-dark stars, the ones I had taken down and restuck, now forming actual constellationson my ceiling. I have let my world shrink, and I’ve let go of things that make me happy in my need to feel needed.
She moves so we’re sitting side by side, pressed together from shoulder to thigh. Her hair is in my face again, but I don’t mind. “I could have said it in a nicer way.”
A smile tugs up the corners of my lips like marionette strings. “Okay, I’ll give you that one.”
Her expression grows serious. “Stevie, can I ask you something? At the risk of starting another argument.”
I swallow, taking in her grave eyes. “Go ahead.”
She’s silent for a moment, chewing on the inside of her cheek. “Are you actually happy here? I know you love your family and your friends and your job and your land. But are you really, truly, incandescently happy?”
“Incandescently happy?” I ask, bemused.
She nods, serious. “Yes. Because as hard as being a working mom is, and as boring as it is to plan what we’re going to eat every day for the rest of our lives, and as frustrating as it is to balance school, work, and extracurricular schedules, I still wake up every single day wondering how I got so lucky. Sometimes, Holden holds me and I just cry because I can’t believe this is my life, and I’m so outrageously happy to have it. It’s like I have imposter syndrome, like I can’t believe that I could deserve all of this goodness. It’s overwhelming.” She says all of this in a rush, her words tripping over themselves to come out. “And if that’s how you feel here, then please, hit me in the boob for suggesting otherwise, but sometimes I look at you, and you have this faraway look in your eyes, and I wonder.”
I blink at her, throat thick. It feels like a band is tightening around my middle, cutting off my oxygen. “Wonder what?”
“If you would have chosen a different life if you hadn’t felt like you needed to stay here.”
