Page 7 of Actually Yours

I screech to a halt for a variety of reasons. The wordsgirlfriendandbandbeing the most obvious.

“What?” I spin on the heels of my feet and come face to face with Jake’s chest. Or face to chest, as the case may be.

“Are you OK?” The concern in his voice has me looking up and then up some more into his worried expression.

“Robby—what?” I can’t find the words to continue and instead allow myself to be led by Jake’s gentle hand on my upper arm, guiding me back to their beige overstuffed couch.

“Was he supposed to be here?”

I sink down into the couch cushions, the narrow skirt of this bridesmaid’s dress (how am I still wearing this thing?)crinkling as I do.

“Hmmmph.” I’ve run out of words. This day, all the good and the bad of it, has officially left me speechless. How is Robby nothere when I desperately need him to be so I can tell him to get lost?

“Want to tell me what happened?” Jake is crouched in front of me, so his eyes, worried behind the lenses of his trendy black glasses frames, are level with mine.

“He’s really not here?” My voice sounds as defeated as I feel and I startle when Jake takes my hands in his much larger hands, squeezing them like he’s offering comfort. And also trying to get me to concentrate.

“No, he’s really not.”

We sit in silence. Me trying to gather my thoughts. Jake trying to read them.

“So, again, what’s this all about?”

He asks this at the same time as letting go of my hand (shame), rising and walking to the kitchen where I watch through a haze of tiredness, as he puts the kettle on.

“Melbourne breakfast tea? One sugar and a splash of milk?”

How does he remember the way I take my tea?

“Sounds perfect,” I sigh. “Absolutely perfect.”

Melbourne Breakfast tea is the cousin, the superior cousin in my opinion, to the more popular English Breakfast tea. The two are very similar, except as with all things made in Melbourne, our version is better.

“Here.” I open my eyes, which I don’t remember closing, to a steaming cup of tea in front of me. And Jake, with a long-sleeve navy blue Henley shirt on. Did I fall asleep?“Drink this.”

My hands are shaking slightly as I take the cup from Jake and absorb the heat radiating from the ceramic cup. Now that the initial surge of energy that had driven me here, urging me on, has diminished, I just feel cold. And oh-so-tired.

“Amelia?”

I blow on the steaming teacup in my hands and avoid his gaze. My thoughts are muddled enough without having to look at that face.

“What happened?”

Well, I think,it started when I met your brother and was stupid enough to actually date him for six months.And then he ghosted me, only to leave this stupid note on my door out of nowhere.

The note!

I pull the crumpled piece of paper from my tiny golden purse and throw it at Jake, wishing I was throwing it at Robby’s head instead.

“What’s this?”

“The reason I’m here.” My voice sounds as exhausted as I feel and I lean back against the couch cushion, taking a much-needed sip from my cup.

“I miss you and I want you back,” he reads out loud, his voice confused with a tinge of something else. Anger? Disgust? “This is from Robby?”

Huh. I’d never stopped to question if it could be from anyone else. There’s been no one in my life for so long; that it had to be from Robby was clear as day in my mind.

“Look at the handwriting,” I say, my eyelids drooping shut. “That childlike scrawl is unmistakable.”

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