Page 27 of Riding the Curve

She squeezes my hand tightly while wiping her own cheeks with the napkin.

“Love you, sweet friend.”

“Love you right back.”

Stillness falls between us for a few moments as we sip our coffees, regaining our composure. “Alright, now tell me everything that happened.”

Harper is unusually calm as I rehash my final hours in New York and the events thereafter. When I finish, she takes a long swig from her coffee. Placing the cup on the table, she folds her hands over each other and takes a deep breath.

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

“No.” I let out a breathy laugh. “But I will get there eventually. As much as it hurts, I feel like things have been over between Carson and me for a long time. If anything, I’m ashamed of myself for staying in that situation for so long. I think I was just trying so hard to make it work, trying to fix myself entirely for him. I’m still working on believing that it wasn’t me that was the one that needed fixing. I wish I would have listened to you a couple of years ago and just left then.”

She squeezes my hands tightly within hers. “Shame on him for ever making you second-guess yourself, and for making you believe you were the problem. You know that you weren’t, right?”

I shrug my shoulders. “It’s going to take me a little while, but hopefully one day I won’t continue to blame myself.”

“Carson is such a pathetic excuse for a man. Ugh! Why are all the handsome businessmen such shallow, selfish pricks? It doesn’t leave a single girl much hope in the male race. They really need to start taking notes from every romance book in history. I mean really, it’s like ‘How to be a Good Man for Dummies.’ The instructions are there, but like the men they are, of course they never read them.”

She winks, releasing my hand to grab her cup and take a sip. Harper’s always been a lot like me, using humor to help us through the harder moments in life.

I snicker into my cup. “There has to be some good ones out there, right?”

“Book boyfriends, or real ones?” She chuckles.

“Real ones.”

She raises a brow, her lips tightening as she tries not to smirk. “Like Emerson Lane?

“Definitely not.”

“Hmm, you sure? From what you just told me about your recent adventures, he seems like he’s changed a bit.” She hums, staring down at her watch.

“Nope, still the same-old Em,” I grumble.

She reaches over to take the empty cup out of my clenched hands. “I seem to remember a time when you were head over heels for that same-old Em.”

Feigning outrage, I throw a palm over my chest and gasp. Harper’s eyes roll while she continues to gather the plates from the table. She’s still smiling all the way to the sink where she deposits our dishes. Returning to the table, she begins to clean it with a wet washcloth.

Without a word, I steal it from her hands and take over cleaning. “He broke my heart. Twice.”

Her smile falls. “Perhaps there was more going on than you really know?”

I pause wiping and sigh deeply.

“It’s been so many years, Hen. Life has taken us all on one hell of a journey. We’re like the hobbits of the Shire. ‘There and back again, an Oakley Falls tale.’”

She giggles as I slap her arm playfully.

“In all seriousness, life changed us in ways that we could have never imagined. Perhaps it’s also given him time to rethink his choices as well? Maybe there was a reason he never followed through both times. Who knows, Hen, maybe there was something more that he was afraid of? If we let it, fear has a funny way of keeping us from the things we want.”

Letting her words sink in, I finish cleaning our table then move onto the others scattered around her small bakery. Returning the cloth to the sink and washing my hands, I stroll over to the kitchen table, where I find Harper. She’s rolling out croissants, adding the final layer of butter before wrapping them to chill until tomorrow.

Making myself useful, I pull up a stool and start scooping a batch of blueberry muffins into the tins she’s already prepped. We work quietly, only the sounds of her rolling pin echoing between us. After a while, I realize that the sounds have ceased from my best friend. When I look up, I catch her staring at me mischievously.

“And what did I do to deserve that crazed look?”

Her smile widens. “I have an amazing idea.”