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“I’m waiting so I can become someone who can have strong feelings and be vulnerable and bold, but also never gets herfeelings hurt.” She was waiting to become a different person. “How do you become like that?”

Beth put her hand on Avery’s shoulder.

“I hate to break it to you, friend, but you can’t.”

Avery dropped her head in her hands.

“I was afraid you were going to say that.”

“You have to talk to her, you know,” Beth said.

Avery didn’t look up.

“I don’t know that. Okay, fine, I do know that, but can I live in ignorance about that for at least one more day? I mean, two days, twelve days, thirty-five days, any of that would be better than one day, but give me one day? Can’t I just immerse myself in the garden or in baking more zucchini bread or learning how to make jam with these peaches that James dropped off for us or something, anything other than thinking about this?”

Beth stood up.

“Yeah. Come on.”

Avery looked up at her, relief washing over her.

“Really?”

Beth nodded.

“Yep. Promise me you’ll remember tomorrow, and deal with it tomorrow, but for now, turn off your phone so you won’t check it forty thousand times tonight, and let’s get out of here.”

Avery stood up immediately.

“Oh, thank God.”

Taylor didn’t know what todo. She left Erica’s house and went straight to Avery’s apartment, but she didn’t answer her door or her text, and her car wasn’t there. She must be out somewhere, but Taylor had no idea where. Probably if she’d respondedto any of Avery’s texts that week in something more than monosyllables, she might know where the fuck Avery was, but that was one more mistake she’d made; there was nothing she could do about it now. She was probably at some work event, or maybe at her garden, or out with Luke, or something, but Taylor couldn’t call Luke to see if he knew where Avery was, because he would think something was wrong, and shouldn’t she know that herself? Shediddrive by the community garden to see if Avery’s car was there, but no luck. Eventually, she just went home and texted Avery again.

Taylor

Hey! let me know if you want to go out later or want me to come over

She started to reread her text, to see if she should change the wording or delete that exclamation point or whatever, but even thinking about that made her roll her eyes at herself, so she just pressed send.

And then she waited. And waited. And waited. She had obviously been cursed by someone, that was the only explanation for this. It could have been anyone, honestly. Anyone she’d dated and broken up with could have cursed her, or maybe they all had. Because now when she was all hyped up to confess to the person she was falling in love with that she was falling in love with her, she couldn’t fucking get in touch with her? That was definitely cosmic payback in some way or another.

And now she had all this time to just…sit here and think about this. Think about how Avery had been so nonchalant about the whole idea of them breaking up, about how she had no idea what Avery’s feelings for her were, about how this whole thingwith Avery had started with her giving Avery flirting lessons so she could learn how to be more comfortable asking women out and dating them, and that maybe Avery viewed this relationship as the first of many relationships with women, and her actual feelings weren’t really engaged in this thing with Taylor at all. About how she was about to tell Avery how she felt, and she had no fucking idea if Avery felt the same way or how it would go.

And now there was no fucking way to know except to sit here and wait for Avery to text her back.

Finally, her phone buzzed, and she grabbed for it.

Avery

Sorry, I was at the garden, and then I had dinner with beth. I have to get up early tomorrow, but can we do tomorrow night?

Tomorrow night? She had to sit with this until tomorrow fucking night? Good God, this was a nightmare.

She wanted to text Avery back that no, she needed to talk to her right away, she didn’t care if she was tired and had to get up early in the morning. Why did it even matter if she had to get up early in the morning anyway? Taylor had slept over at her place lots of times when Avery had an early morning meeting; they dealt with that just fine!

But she knew that number one, that was probably not the way to handle this situation, and number two, Avery turned her phone on do not disturb as soon as she even thought about getting ready for bed, so it wouldn’t do her any good anyway. She picked up the phone.

“She had dinner with hergardenfriend tonight and is going tobed early, what am I going to doooo?” she whined as soon as Erica answered.