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Under any other circumstances, I’d peel her off me, but tonight, my head in her hair that smells like coconuts, I start to cry.

“Wanna talk about it?” she asks, handing me a tissue from her pocket when we finally pull apart.

I shrug, wiping my nose, as she circles back around her register. “I fell in love with someone when I knew I shouldn’t and kept a secret I knew would crush him.”

“Hmm. That sounds tough, but you’ll figure it out,” she says with too much displaced optimism, once again dragging groceries by the scanner, causing a beep noise with each item. “I saw the way you two were together. Y’all have the good stuff.”

She grins, and I force a smile.

If it were only that easy.

On Sunday, I go to church. Alone.

I consider calling Bo, texting him, something. But I don’t. I can’t. After everything that happened, everything he’s said and I’ve done, there’s just no point.

I pick one of the trails we’d been to—his hat on my head—and spend the entire walk crying tears that the November wind scrapes off my skin with gusts that cut like ice. The beautiful fall leaves are long gone; the bare trees that remain are as alone as I am.

With all the years I’ve spent alone in my life, I never would have imagined this change would be such a shock to my system. Yet, alone before Bo and alone after him are two very different places to exist. One manageable, the other a black hole.

I sit at my kitchen table and stare at the thick envelope with his name scribbled across it, the paper and ink taunting me.

My phone vibrates with a text from Libby.Hey girl, I’m sending over the service schedule for Veda. Let me know if you need anything. Yoga next week?xo

A picture of a paper with Veda’s face next to times, dates, and locations comes through.

Veda’s services. Because she died. And Bo blames me.

Setting my phone down, I don’t respond. There’s nothing to say.

Eyes back on the envelope, my phone vibrates again. This time, it’s Bo’s name I see.Can we talk?

The tightness in my throat those three words cause sends my hand to my own neck.

One breath. Two.

Instead of immediately responding, I reach for a notebook from a basket and take out a pen. I need a plan. A strategy. Some way to manage this situation that isn’t driven by emotions and grief and the emptiness that fills me.

On one side I write,reasons to talk to him, on the other,reasons not to.

I can’t be with him, I know that. This exemplifies everything I’ve spent my whole life believing: love has no place in my life. Some people might call it depressing, Mabel would call itwomen’s fiction horseshit, either way, this is too messy. Whether I get cancer or not, I’m not equipped to be with someone else.

Under reasons to talk, I write:closure, maybe friendship?, Huck might need him in the future, I have a letter for him from Veda,I love him.I scratch the last one off. I do love him, but that can’t be a reason. If I see him, it can’t be because I love him.

Under reasons not to talk, I write:he blames me for Veda dying, he said terrible things, I love him.Somehow, keeping the fact I love him under reasons not to talk to him makes more sense.

Eyes pinging between the two lists, weighing my options, I pick up my phone.Okay.

His response is immediate.Okay. Lots of family coming in tonight. Tomorrow before the visitation? Libby told me she sent you the times.

A million things I want to say tingle at my fingertips, but all I write isSee you then.

I park in front of Bo’s house and grab Veda’s letter for Bo from my purse. Not surprising, there are nearly a dozen vehicles parked in his yard and driveway.

Veda asked me to never stop loving him, and I won’t. Last night, lying in bed, I decided that even though Mabel is hell-bent on love meaning love story, I know love can look different. Maybe I loved him like a lover before, but now our love will be something else. Friendship. Like we said it was supposed to be from the beginning.

Or like a brother.

I drop my head side to side, stretching my neck at the thought. I don’t need to have siblings to know that after the things I’ve done with Bo, I’llneverbe able to look at him like a sibling.