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“Ugh!” I groaned into the phone, making Jason chuckle.
“I’m sorry. It’s not funny. I just never thought I’d see you shed a tear, let alone cry over a boy. He must really be something, huh?”
I scoffed. Thought it over. “Yeah, I guess so,” I grumbled.
“What happened?” he asked.
Despite my better judgment, I told him. Everything. From the very beginning until the very stupid (on both our parts) end.
How much I liked him. Cared about him. What a decent friend he was. How different we were, but how much it felt like we made sense anyway.
Jason patiently listened to my entire rant, shocking me when he quietly offered up some advice. “If he cares about you as much as you care about him,” he started, “all you have to do is apologize—which, I know,I know,is nearly physically impossible for you to do, but if you can manage to dig up your heart in that dark pit of your soul, then…”
I burst out in laughter through my tears. Jason knew me better than anyone, and that totally did sound like me. But I’d changed in the last few weeks.
“I did,” I said. “Apologize.”
“Holy shit,” he cut in with a shocked whisper that made me crack a smile.
“But he still said he needed a break,” I finished.
“Huh.” He thought it over. “Something tells me this break won’t last long, but even if it does… what’s meant for you will eventually come back to you when you let it go. Or however the saying goes. If he doesn’t see what he’s missing, he doesn’t deserve you anyway.”
Okay—wow. “But if he does come back? Then what?” I voiced my deeper fear. Allowing it out into the open. Because I needed to know.
“Then, if you two care about each other as much as I think you do, you’ll make it work. It doesn’t have to be that complicated, kiddo.”
That seemed simple enough. I had to deconstruct a few boxes in my mind and build a new one to place that thought in, but it was one I wanted to keep.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“And you won’t make fun of me?”
He chuckled. “I won’t make fun of you.”
“Do you believe in love?” It felt like one of the most vulnerable things I’d ever asked in my life.
His breath halted, the line going silent before he blew out a long breath. “Yeah,” he said carefully. “I do.”
“So, Mom didn’t screw with your head like she did mine?”
“No. She did. For a while. But Linda… she’s full of shit, Olls. She wouldn’t know love if it smacked her upside the face. She acts like it’s this godawful thing when the truth is, she’s just fucking scared. Dad broke her heart, so she put it back together and hardened it into a hunk of ice. And then she spewed a bunch of bullshit our way.
“I think, in her own twisted way, she’s just trying to protect us. But it doesn’t make her right, kiddo. It makes her sad.”
I nodded silently, taking his words to heart. Because I was sure they were right, coming from him. I just needed to find a way to let go of these ingrained notions for good.
Chapter 21
Winter Break
I was giving Neil the space he said he needed. No phone calls, no texts, and definitely not seeing him in person. Which wasn’t hard since it was winter break. But still, I missed him. A stupid, ridiculous amount.
The number of times I wanted to hop inside of Wednesday and drive down to Inkcafé—or worse, his house, and really show his mom how crazy I could be—was also ridiculous. At one point, I’d actually thrown my keys out of my bedroom window so I wouldn’t be tempted.
It took me half an hour to find them when I decided I needed some Taco Bell five minutes later.