Say Yes (Nostalgic Summer Romance)

“It’s a romantic notion covering up a haunting reality.”

“That’s exactly it. That’s exactly how it feels. Haunting.” I frowned. “It’s only been a little over a week since I last saw him, but sometimes I wonder if I imagined him, if he was ever real at all. He’s like my own personal ghost.”

“He was real,” Angela assured me. “Everything between you was real, too.”

I nodded, falling quiet as I clasped my hands in my lap and let my gaze fall there, too. “I don’t even know where he lives,” I whispered. “Other than somewhere in Connecticut. And even that’s a maybe. He grew up there, and his mom still lives there, but that doesn’t mean he does.” I rolled my lips together. “He said some really scary things to me before he left, Angela. About not wanting to live…”

“He wouldn’t do that,” she said.

I shrugged. “I want to think he wouldn’t, but when he’s like that…” I shook my head. “I can’t imagine carrying around all the guilt he does, all that pain. On the days he was his real self with me, his old self, the boy who existed before the accident?” I smiled. “He was light, carefree, charming and fun. He had hope, even if he tried to deny it. I could see it.” My smile slipped. “But on the bad days, he was someone else entirely. Cruel. Miserable. Completely shut down.”

“He wouldn’t take his own life,” Angela said again.

“I was checking obituaries for a while,” I admitted.

“Harley…”

“I know, I know, I just… I was terrified. I still am.”

Angela shook her head. “It just doesn’t make sense. I get that he was upset, hurt, scared… whatever. But to just leave without saying anything? Not even a goodbye? He had to know what this would do to you. To Thomas.”

I pressed a hand over my chest, as if I could soothe the raging fire the word goodbye had just sparked to life there. “I’m not sure which would have been worse.”

“At least that way, you would have known.”

Silence fell between us, Angela finishing her coat before blowing on her toes and waiting for them to dry enough to move.

“You know what else I was researching?” I asked after a while. “The librarian helped me find the latest census. There are three-point-two million people in Connecticut.” I shook my head. “Even if I did want to find him, the odds are nearly impossible that I ever would.”

“He knows where you are, though.”

“For the next couple of weeks,” I countered. “After that… he’ll have no idea. We’ll be lost to each other. And let’s be honest, he’s not coming back.”

“He might.”

I flattened my lips. “Angela.”

“Okay,” she conceded. “It’s not likely. But it is possible.”

“I won’t hold my breath,” I said. And as the words rolled off my tongue, my head fell back against the wall and I laughed. “You know, he said to me one time that hope was the most dangerous thing of all. I thought that was such a foolish thing to say. I didn’t understand what he meant.” I lifted my head to look at her again. “I get it now.”

“I’m so sorry, Harley.”

“Me, too.”

“Okay. Topic change!” she announced, snapping her fingers. “How’s your final project going?”

“The assignment is to paint my current emotions,” I deadpanned. “How do you think?”

“Ugh… bad topic change.”

I chuckled, using the wall to help myself stand before I reached down for her hand. “Are your toes dry yet? I think the best way to change the subject here is to turn it back to your project and get some wine in us.”

“They’re dry enough,” she said, taking my hand for the assist. “And we’ll definitely need wine for the next part of this conversation, because I need some advice.”

“On what, how to dress in China?”

“More like how to not make a move on my hot Italian professor slash new boss.”

“Oh, shit…”

“Yeah, you’re not the only one with problems, okay?”

I snorted. “Glad to be in good company. Let’s get changed and be somewhere with a full wine glass in fifteen minutes or less.”

“Last one with her shoes on pays the bill.”

Angela left five days later, and a new kind of loneliness sank into my bones like a chemical invasion.

Without her in the apartment, I couldn’t tell reality from my dreams, couldn’t tell what had been true from what I’d made up in my head. Everything about my time in Florence had been uprooted and stolen in a flash, and I was left behind.

She felt as distant a memory as Liam did.

With both of them gone, my internship at the museum completed, and class on hold until presentation day, the days bled into the nights and the nights into the mornings. Painting was my only reprieve, and I worked tirelessly on my final project with a mixture of love and hate and pure apathy for what I was creating.