Page 46 of Feels Like Coming Home

“Piper!” I cocked my head to the side and looked at her. “I cannot believe you just said that! He does not wanna fuck me, oh my god.”

“Hays…Haaaaaays!” Her eyes narrowed and she made a face at me. “Hetotallywants to fuck you. He pretty much told you he wanted you tobe the boss of him. Hello?! That screams ‘Please come fuck me.’”

I dropped my head and blew out a breath.

“Piper, I can’t believe that. Not now, not so soon after losing Connor. I…I can’t even think about being with another man like that so soon. It would feel like a betrayal.”

Without warning and out of nowhere, tears were pricking my eyes, threatening to roll down my face like giant boulders down a hill. The energy in the room shifted instantaneously and the air was filled with sadness and grief.

“Sweetie…oh, Haley, I’m sorry.” Piper reached across the counter and grabbed both of my hands. “I shouldn’t have said that, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you feel like I was pushing you to move on from Connor. I would never do that.”

Sniffing back my tears and wiping my eyes with the sleeve of my sweatshirt, I looked back at my friend. “I know you didn’t, I’m sorry. Sometimes it just comes out of nowhere and it’s too much to handle all at once. You’re fine, it’s okay.” It was too late though and an onslaught of tears ran down my face uncontrollably.

Piper looked at me with sadness filling her eyes. She let me have my moment without saying anything but continued to hold my hands as tears fell down my face. It had been the first time in a few weeks that I had cried like this. The memory of Connor and being with him so intimately brought up a fresh wave of guilt and grief. Guilt that I was still alive and he wasn’t, and grief because he was gone in the first place.

My shoulders were hunched over the counter, and I pulled my hands from Piper’s to brace myself as I just let the tears come. Crying like this always left me feeling physically exhausted but emotionally lighter. As if releasing all the tears from inside of me was a way of releasing the sadness and grief I had stored up. Piper sat on the barstool across the counter until I was able to calm down again and collect myself.

“Feel better?” she asked. I nodded, unable to talk through the giant lump that was in my throat, which was now raw from my sobs. “Come here.” She patted the seat of the stool next to her and I moved around the counter and took a seat. She placed her hands on my knees and looked at me with a soft smile.

“I'm going to say something that I don’t know if you’re ready to hear, but I feel as if it’s my duty as your best friend to say things that are hard to hear sometimes. Hays, look at me.” Following her direction, I moved my eyes from the floor to meet hers.

“I don’t know what Camden wants or why he’s here. I don’t even know if you know. But what I do knowis that you’re allowed to be happy and you deserve to be happynowif that’s an opportunity life is presenting you with. You love Connor, I love Connor, but you being happy with someone else isn’t a betrayal to him. Ah—I’m not done.” She held her hand up to stop me from interrupting her.

“I don’t care if it’s only been seven months. There is no timeline for things like this. Life gives us things on its own time, not ours, and it’s up to us to either work with it or fight against it. You’re allowed to work with it and take the happiness that life is handing you right now, even if it’s in the form of a new person who very clearly loves you.”

I swallowed hard, taking in her words. She was right, they weren't easy to hear. Part of me knew she had a point, that it was okay to want to let someone in so they could help me fill in the massive hole that’s recently formed in my heart. But part of me knew Cam, and how he was, and feared that he wouldn’t want to fill the hole for long. He’d left holes in me in the past, so how could I trust him to not do it again? I leaned across the two stools, and wrapped my arms around Piper’s neck, pulling her into a hug.

“Thank you for being the best friend a girl could ask for. I seriously wouldn’t be able to do any of this without you,” I spoke into her hair.

“Damn right you wouldn’t.” She winked at me and smiled. “Now, why don’t we take all this food and our coffees and get to work? Someone is playing hooky today and we have a shit ton of stuff to get done before that happens.” I rolled my eyes at her and shook my head, getting up from the stool and collecting all of our things to head into the office.

Maybe Piper was right. Maybe this was life handing me happiness and I needed to either fight it or figure out how to work with it. I wasn’t sure how I would learn to work with it, but I decided to give it my best shot.

I’ve never been one to turn down a challenge before anyway.

23

HALEY | NOW

It had been several hours since my meltdown earlier this morning and every time a new hour passed, I got more and more restless.

I tried my best to focus on what Piper and I were working on, but it never lasted more than a few minutes. Piper tried multiple times to get me to refocus on what we were doing, but it never really worked. After too many redirects, she was over me.

“Oh my god, GO. I cannot deal with you anymore,” she huffed, shuffling the stack of papers in front of her into a neat pile.

“What are you talking about?” I returned my glance to Piper, breaking my eyes out of a distant stare.

“Haley, you’ve been distracted all day. We have talked about the same vendor for the last thirty minutes and you still haven’t answered my question.”

“What was the question?” Honestly, I had no idea what she had been saying to me, my mind was focused on Cam and our…whatever was happening this afternoon.

“Exactly. I’m calling this workday closed. You can go now.” Piper dismissed me as if she was the boss and I worked for her.

I let out a sigh and stood from the conference table. I looked at the clock and it read 2:10. Under an hour until I was supposed to meet Cam at Coastal Brews.

I walked toward my bedroom and once inside, opened up the closet, looking at all of my options. I decided to throw on a sundress and a sweater in case it was colder outside than I expected. Looking at myself in the mirror, I brushed out my slightly longer than shoulder-length hair and pinned the strands around my face back so they stayed out of my eyes. I always liked it when I pulled my hair back like this because then the freckles on my face were on full display. My mom always called my freckles “angel kisses” which made me love them even more. Before leaving my room, I slipped on a pair of sandals and grabbed my purse.

Out in the kitchen, Piper sat on one of the barstools writing something down in her notebook. When she heard me approach, she turned, looked at me, and gave me a sly smirk.

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