“Love that you’re feeling better,” she tells me. “It was getting annoying that you’re living in the same city yet I still barely see you.”
My head jerks up. “What are you talking about? I see you.”
She scoffs. “Poppy, the last time we were in the same room together was the night we went to Mile High Club, and you started sleeping with Skaggs.”
Skaggs.
Haven’t heard him called that in months.
And hearing it makes my heart hurt.
“I know things are messy with him, but isolating isn’t helping. You need people. Sunlight. Cute drinks.”
She’s not wrong.
I just don’t love being called out while my stomach is still in the process of healing.
Even now it churns as the server sets a steaming plate of wontons in the center of our table.
“I’m fine. I just needed sleep,” I lie because apparently, pushing people away is the only thing I’m good at now.
Nova leans back, sipping her iced tea like she’s preparing for a deposition. “Have you even spoken to him?”
I hesitate. “He texted.”
“And?”
“And… I said I didn’t need anything. Said I was doing good and not to worry.”
“Wow.” Nova groans. “That is not the same as talking. What you’re doing is the equivalent of brick walling.”
I hate it when she makes up random phrases. Brick walling? What even is that…
“I didn’t want to sound pathetic.”
“You don’t sound pathetic.” She gives me a look as she reaches for an appetizer. “You weresick,not thirst-trapping.”
True.
Still, I don’t know how to explain the weird knot in my chest. How hearing from him made me feel better for five seconds and worse for five hours.
The truth is—I domisshim.
Not just the sex. Not just the way he used to let me put my cold feet on him during movie nights.
I miss his laugh. His steadiness. The quiet little ways he took care of me without making a show of it.
I miss feeling like I belonged somewhere.
To someone.
Nova breaks my internal spiral with a quiet, “You know you can still fight for something even if you were the one who walked away, right?”
Can I? I’m not sure about that.
Because it doesn’t matter how much I miss him, or how often I find myself staring at the stupid mug he used to drink his protein sludge out of, or how I still sleep on the right side of my bed like he might walk in and take the other half.
I left.
