Page 119 of Before We're More Than Friends
“There you go,” Mom said, satisfaction in her voice. “That didn’t take too long to resolve.”
“That’s the only part of the situation that has been resolved,” I grumbled. “I’m still heartbroken and humiliated.”
“I understand.” Mom took a bite of her pasta. “It’ll take a while to adjust to things since you trusted him.”
Trusting people felt like trying to eat fresh pasta while itwas too hot. It never cooled down, burning me over and over again.
“Yeah.” I swallowed. “So I was thinking about the letter Dad sent me. I don’t know what to say to him.” I looked at Arielle. “What about you?”
“I’m on the same boat.” She scratched the back of her neck. “I don’t want to ignore him, but it’s still too soon to let him in.”
“He wrote me a letter, too,” Mom said. “I responded to him, and I just got his response back today. We’re trying to schedule to meet each other on Sunday.” She gave a small smile, her cheeks flushing. “I’m excited to finally see him in person again.”
“Maybe I can come with you,” I blurted before thinking twice, admitting defeat.
Crap, I couldn’t forgive him like that! It hadn’t even been a month since the arrest.
He hadn’t even acted like he’d wanted to change.
Mom raised an eyebrow. “Really? You think you’re ready?”
“Maybe. I don’t want to write a letter to him.” But then I thought about how seeing him in person might be even worse. Seeing his face, with his piercing eyes and faint smile—would he even smile?—would make me fall apart. “I don’t know,” I said. “I’ll think about it.”
Mom nodded before her gaze went to Arielle. “What about you?”
“Hard pass,” Arielle said, her voice just as stiff as her body language. “I’m not seeing him for a long time.”
“I understand.” Mom chewed the inside of her cheek. “Let me know if you reconsider.”
Arielle slowed down her eating pace. “I won’t.”
We finished our dinner, and I went back into my room to put on my playlists while packaging some orders. Business was still running slow, but I needed to stay consistent. To remind myself that at least something was good about my life.
I looked through the information of the people who had requested orders, but there was one name that had caught me off guard.
Isabelle Wilcox. San Francisco, California. Two purple bracelets with pearls.
My heart skipped a beat. Was I reading the name wrong? Was this another Isabelle Wilcox?
I opened my Raining Gems Instagram account to see that Isabelle had started following me yesterday. What the heck was going on?
I clicked on her profile. She’d changed her picture to one of her smiling while on the rooftop of a building, her dark skin glowing in the city light. Her hair was done in long, beautiful box braids with a light brown ombre. She’d updated her bio and used my favorite Helen Keller quote. Her feed still looked the same, though her story highlights were now purple instead of blue. Purple was my favorite color.
Yeah, like my old best friend would redecorate her account to make it cater to me. She hadn’t even bothered to like a single post from my personal account in two and a half years. She only still followed me on there because she followed over four thousand people. It would’ve been a nightmare for her to do an unfollowing spree.
Raina
Hey, I saw you left an order for Raining Gems. I didn’t know you still kept up with my shop. I’ve missed you.
I quickly deleted the message and tried to come up with something else. After four failed message drafts, I closed the app. I didn’t have the brain capacity to think about this.
CHAPTER 29
Dallas
The entire school week lasted a lifetime. I’d hoped Raina would soften toward me as time went on, but she wasn’t even close. Each day in Chemistry, she turned her back toward me, grunting every time I had a nanosecond of interaction with her.
When I walked into Oliver’s garage Saturday afternoon, she didn’t turn to look at me like everyone else had. She crossed her arms as they talked to me, her face hardened.
