Page 92 of For Keeps. For Always.

The likelihood I won’t message you is high. That includes replying. It’s nothing personal.

I smile.

So quirky.

SoHenley.

I know I should swipe left.

I know the right thing to do is to let sleeping dogs lie.

We’ve lived that life.

We’ve failed.

More than once.

We’ve both been served more pain than we deserve.

And at the hand of one another, no less.

But as my thumb meets my screen, I swipe right without hesitation.

The ball is now firmly in her court.

Sitting.

Waiting.

She can ignore it.

Or she can reach out.

I close the app, panicked that I’ll let myself fall into the arms of another woman. In self-preservation. To prove to myself that I don’tneedHenley to reach out.

I feel sick with regret.

Not because I don’t want her.

Not because I don’t want to see her.

But because I want ittoomuch.

I miss her in a way that causes a pain in my chest I can’t ease.

I love her.

But more than any of that, I miss my best friend.

I miss sitting with her on our rock, staring at the flow of the river while we hid ourselves away from the ugly in her life.

I miss being the most important person in her life.

I miss being the only person in this world who could make her smile.

Who does that for her now? Who takes the sadness in her eyes and erases it with deep conversation and the love she’s been so deprived of in life?

I hate that she doesn’t need me in the same obsessive way I do her.

Source: www.allfreenovel.com