Mine Would Be You (5)

I don’t want to be mad, even though anger pricks at my skin. I just want to let him go.

“I’ll always have love for you, Nin, forever,” he says, his deep brown eyes pouring into mine.

We look at each other, communicating a million things both of us could say out loud but choose not to. I could ask him to try again. But I won’t. He could beg me for another chance. But he doesn’t. And the small part of me that wants him to is scratching at my skin, waiting on the back of my tongue.

His lips are pushed together in a sad, closed-mouth half-smile, and my eyes are brimming with tears, but I hold them in. I don’t want to cry in front of him anymore. I don’t want him to see me vulnerable ever again.

And I say the one word I shouldn’t, but I do it anyway.

I extend a shaky hand. “Friends?”

He gives me a soft smile. “Friends.”

My heart constricts because I know it’s a lie. I’ll never call him with good news, he’ll never tell me about his day, and we’ll never walk through the familiar streets again.

We’ll never really be friends again.

The bottle is ripped out of my grasp. Harper is standing over me with the alcohol in her hands. Sloan is looking at me with sad eyes, you’re over your ex, but he’s getting married, and it sucks eyes. Jenko is watching the whole thing from the windowsill. His tail flicks lazily up and down as he watches us with lethargic eyes and perked ears.

“You cannot drink this whole thing tonight.”

I lean my head against the wall from where I’m seated on the floor. Harper’s face softens as she bends down.

“I know it sucks, Nina. But you will feel even worse when you have to wake up and go to work tomorrow. We can drink this wedding invitation into oblivion on Friday, I pinky promise.”

I grip her pinky with mine as she pulls me up, and the three of us take seats on the couch. They both make space for me in between them, and I crawl into it as they cover me with the black fuzzy blanket from our couch. My skin is still warm from the alcohol flowing through me, and I can’t stop picking my lip as I keep rereading that invitation and replaying our relationship.

Harper hands me the pan of brownies. “I said we couldn’t get trashed, but we can eat our feelings.”

Even Jenko, who really only likes me and doesn’t like being crowded by anyone, including my best friends, pads over and curls onto my lap. His tiny body warms me as he purrs in my lap, and I rest my head on Sloan’s shoulder.

Harper’s manicured nail is tracing shapes on my arm, and I can’t help it as the tears finally come out. It’s quiet, no noise except the occasional beep of a horn and the TV, but it feels like a part of me is chipping off for good. Myles has been locked away in a box for so long.

A happy, closed, muted box. And that invitation was the hidden key that opened it. Most of me is happy for him. I’m happy he found someone.

But a very small, miniscule part of me is painfully aware that someone isn’t me.

Another part is upset at how easily he moved on, and that I’m still here. Alone.

Those parts escape me through tears that crawl down my cheeks and land in quiet spatters on my thighs.

I blink away as much as I can and lean my head back onto the couch. To my left I’m surprised, though I shouldn’t be, to see wetness in Harper’s eyes. “Harps.”

She glares at me through the two tears dripping down her cheeks.

“You know whenever you cry, I cry. And I don’t know, I hate him. For everything he did. And I never wanted you two back together, but it’s still the same Myles we all grew up with. And he’s getting fucking married.”

My lips quirk into a smile, and I pull her into my arms, where she cuddles her orange-red hair into me. Jenko adjusts to make room for the new addition, but he doesn’t run away, and Sloan holds us all together.

Harper is all hard edges and sharpened knives, but when she loves you, this side materializes. Ever since we were kids, whenever I cried, you were bound to see Harper in tears with me. Although, her tears were always accompanied with a glare. She hates crying, but she’s also a sympathy crier.

She is fully aware of the irony.

“He’s getting married,” I echo, biting the inside of my lip as I usually do.

“Are we going to go?” Sloan asks quietly as if I might combust, which is possible, or as if Harper might completely lose it. Also possible.

“Yeah. Yeah, we are. It may be depressing, but I need to see it. That final nail in the coffin.” I pause. “I’m also going to look hot. We may be over, and I may be in therapy, but it’s a need.”

That brings a chuckle out of them both.

“You know it’s okay to put yourself out there, Nina. I know you’re okay—happy—on your own, but you don’t have to be alone. It’s okay to open yourself up.” Sloan’s voice is quiet as she says it, but it doesn’t change the pang of fear I feel at the words.

Even the idea, the possibility, of doing that, of doing love again, is terrifying. To get hurt like that again. When I’m alone, the only person that can hurt me is me.

Love means letting someone else have the ability to hurt you.

And I’ve had quite enough of that.

“I’d much rather sit inside my well-guarded, fortified castle, thank you very much.”

Harper lifts her head. Her gray eyes are still slightly watery, but they pierce into mine. “You can’t sit here with Jenko forever.”