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The familiarity floods me with much needed comfort. I fumble for my house key, unlock the door, and see two stunned faces pop up over the couch.
“Precious Lord!” Eve squeals. “Kit Kat, you nearly scared me into an early grave!”
“Wait!” Tommy panics, scrambling for his phone. “What day is it?”
“I’m early.” I drop my bags just inside the door and beeline for the couch where they have already made a space for me to sit between them.
“What snack level are we at for this conversation?” Eve wraps her arms around me, and her jasmine and lavender perfume envelops me, filling me with a sense of peace in the midst of my emotional storm.
“Is ‘all the snacks’ an appropriate answer?” I whimper, fighting the burning of my bloodshot eyes.
“On it.” Tommy jumps up and raids the cabinets of every bag of chips, gummies, and cookies. Then he snatches three spoons and the giant tub of chocolate fudge ice cream from the freezer. “Ready.” He dumps the haul on the coffee table and extends spoons to Eve and me.
We start with the ice cream before it turns to soup, and I tell them everything that happened from the moment we parted ways in the airport terminal to landing in Hawaii, running into Derek, performingI Will Surviveat Karaoke, the Wedding Games, fainting, kissing Theo, getting my first tattoo, attending the wedding, and getting into a fight with Theo, before my lonely flight home.
By the time I finish telling them about the weekend, we have finished the ice cream, two bags of chips, a sleeve of cookies, and several packs of sour gummies. At least now my belly hurts more than my aching heart.
“I’m sorry, Kit Kat.” Eve squeezes my thigh gently.
“Do you love him?” Tommy asks and Eve smacks a hand to her forehead. “What?” He shrugs, shoving one more cookie in his mouth. “It’s a perfectly valid question.”
“Have you not been listening, Tom Cat?” Eve rolls her eyes and huffs, “Of course she’s in love with him.”
Tommy darts his eyes to meet mine for confirmation and I nod. “I do love him.”
“Then why don’t you tell him that?” Tommy scratches his round belly. “He obviously has feelings for you too.”
“What if it doesn’t work between us?” I wipe my swollen eyes and run my fingers over my hair. “It’s only been a few days and I love his family…” I suck in a breath to keep from ugly crying again. “It felt so nice, you know? Like I had a family of my own again. And if we broke up and I lost them…lost him…” I shake my head and Eve hands me another tissue for me to add to my pile on the floor beneath my feet. “I just don’t think I can put myself through this.”
“Your fears are valid.” Tommy bobs his head.
“But?” I turn my head toward him.
He reaches for my hand and swallows my fingers in his. “But if you aren’t willing to risk getting hurt, or face your fears, you will be an eighty-year-old woman wondering what would have happened had you only taken the chance to love again.”
“Tommy’s right, Kit Kat.”
Hell must have frozen over for these two to agree.
“If you don’t want to be with Theo because he’s not the right man for you or because he’s a jerk, I say forget him.” Eve slides toward the edge of the couch cushion, her elbows resting on her knees. “But if you are running from him because you’re scared of what may or may not happen, then, and I say this with all the love in my body, you are cheating yourself out of your own happiness.”
“He asked me to not go,” I push up from the couch and walk over the windows overlooking the street below, leaning against the wall to look out. “He told me to stay with him. And I told him it wouldn’t work, that this was for the best. That we were going to part ways eventually.”
“Kit Kat -”
I wipe my tears and whip around to face Ma and Pa who are still sitting on their respective sides of the couch. “I think I’ll feel better once I get a good night’s sleep.”
Eve and Tommy glance at each other but neither says anything. I know what they want me to do. They want me to call or text him confessing my love for him and ask him to forget every hurtful thing I said to him on the beach. Call it me being stubborn or me being too prideful, but I can’t bring myself to do it.
“It’s my fault.” I bob my head, rubbing my fingers across the nave of my neck. “Hellfire and broomsticks!”
“What?” Tommy’s eyes bug out of his head and Eve stifles a laugh at my cursing outburst.
“Hellfire and broomsticks,” I motion in the air with my hands. “I say it all the time.”
“No, you absolutely do not.” Eve smirks. “Do we need to teach you some proper curse words, Kit Kat?”
After thinking about it for a minute, I realize I have never uttered the phrase ‘Hellfire and broomsticks’ aloud. Like never. I have only ever muttered it to myself or thought it.
