Page 55 of Like First Love, Again

Climbing the stone steps up to her porch, Mia was relieved that Eric’s car was nowhere to be seen. She was back to address everything she’d been pushing away, but she just needed to catch her breath first. Just needed to get her bearings. Then she’d deal with it.

Inside the house, the air was cold and stilted despite the late August heat. The home she once loved was hollow. The furniture she and Eric had spent so much time picking together looked impersonal. The walls they’d painted ahappygray seemed moreinstitutional than inviting. It was all too sterile. Too curated. Like Mia was walking into a showroom rather than a place to live, laugh, or love.

Silence pressed in on her from all sides. No music. No laughter. No Tori. Just the faint hum of the fridge and the ache in her chest that hadn’t eased since she’d left Miami.

The lingering smell of coffee in the air—coffee Eric had made before leaving for the hospital that morning—made Mia feel like an intruder. Like the rightful occupants would be back at any moment to find her standing in their space.

Mia wanted to outrun the unease clawing up her throat. She checked the magnetic calendar on the side of the fridge. Eric was such a dependable creature of habit, Mia thought with more nausea burning her chest. Even though they didn’t have to coordinate their schedules anymore, he still marked off his shifts at the hospital. For the next three nights he’d be the ER attending physician.

Relief spread through Mia’s body like sand smothering a fire. She wasn’t going to be confronted by Eric tonight. She slipped off her shoes before she walked from the kitchen tile to the reclaimed wood stairs that led her up to the guest room where she’d been staying for nearly a year. Eric had insisted that she keep the main bedroom, but Mia refused. She’d argued that Eric needed more rest to save lives than she did to run scans, but in reality, she hadn’t wanted to sleep in that room. It was easier to ignore the disappointment of failing at one more thing when she wasn’t surrounded by the ghost of happier times.

She showered the travel off in the narrow hall bathroom and pulled on her comfiest sweats. As soon as she dropped onto the full-sized bed, Mia regretted not having asked Tori to lend her an old T-shirt or something. Curled in on her side, Mia wished she was wrapped in the comfort of Tori’s scent.

Tori had driven her to the airport four hours earlier, and they’d been texting since she dropped her off, but that didn’t stem the crushing loneliness rolling into Mia’s heart like a toxic mist. Desperate to restore the connection, Mia reached for the phone she’d tossed on the nightstand. She hadn’t dated in a long time, and she was sure that being so eager was going to turn Tori off. Knowing that didn’t stop her thumbs from racing over the screen.

Mia:I made it… home(?)

Mia:I already want to come back.

Mia:Or I want you here. Or both.

Mia:Sorry. I’m spiraling. Ignore me. I just miss you already.

A heartbeat later, dots appeared signaling Tori’s response. Then they disappeared and reappeared. Doubt dripped cold and revolting in Mia’s empty stomach. Tori probably wanted to reply with something likeget a grip, but she was too sweet for that level of brutal honesty.

Closing her eyes, Mia tried to talk herself off the ledge. Even if Tori realized that she should run screaming from a relationship with her, she’d promised to stay Mia’s friend. And that could be enough, right? The thought of not having Tori exactly how she wanted—in her bed, her body, her heart—made Mia groan into her pillow. She was on the verge of suffocating on hypoallergenic down feathers when her phone buzzed in her hand.

Springing up, her heart lifted back to its rightful place. She answered without hesitation. Without checking to see whether she’d looked like she’d run afoul of the spin cycle. And then Tori’s face was on her screen and she didn’t care about showing every damn card in her deck.

Golden in the afternoon light of her apartment, Tori’s hair was pulled back in a messy, stubby little ponytail. She waslooking at Mia with a lopsided smile and brown eyes glistening with the same fuck-I-miss-you sentiment torturing Mia.

“Hi,” Tori said, voice warm enough to penetrate Mia’s skin from a thousand miles away.

Mia exhaled completely for the first time in hours. Even over the phone, being with Tori was the only time Mia wasn’t taking shallow breaths. The only time she wasn’t surviving from moment to moment.

“You didn’t go into the office,” Mia noticed.

Tori shrugged. “I didn’t really feel like peopling after I left you,” she said in a way that sounded so sad Mia had every instinct to drive her ass back to the airport.

Fishing for reassurance like the pathetic little troll she was, Mia winced. “It’s not because you’re sitting there thinking about how to cut things off with the emotionally unbalanced weirdo crying at you and bullying you into dating her?—”

Tori furrowed her brow in surprise. “Mia?—”

There was no stopping the purge of ugly thoughts tormenting her. “I mean, I’m insecure and unstable and weirdly sweaty at all times?—”

Tori snorted.

“Victoria! I’m serious,” she demanded, even though she wasn’t sure whether she believed it or feared it. “Are you laughing at me?”

Tori bit back her obvious amusement. “No,” she lied, still chuckling. “I mean, yes, but notatyou.”

Mia narrowed her eyes, smile undermining her attempts at being stern. “So then what the heck is so funny?”

Bottom lip trapped adorably between her teeth, Tori tipped her head to the side. She looked at Mia like she was evaluating every millimeter of her face. Tori’s deep breath settled Mia’s nerves. “That’s just not how I see you.”

Mia hated that she wasn’t secure enough to take the unelaborated response. That it couldn’t be enough that Tori disagreed. “How do you see me?” Mia asked because she was weak and she needed to change the narrative in her own head. Needed to believe something else about herself when all she could see was failure.

Tori went quiet, her expression softening while she looked at Mia like nothing else existed. “I see someone who could so easily give up, but chooses to push forward every single day. Someone who has kept their light burning despite having been through relentless darkness.” She smiled with her eyes. “Who feels everything too much, but doesn’t shut down. Someone who’s trying—really trying—even though it hurts.”

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