My thumb hovers over the delete key like it has every day for the past ten days.

His final words to me. Words I can’t blame him for sending. Words I didn’t even understand the full force of until Lynette later sent me a message to inform me Cody died from injuries he sustained during a rescue that Sunday I was busy tearing his family apart. He was heroically saving children, and I was trying to sever his from their grandparents….

Tears threaten my eyes again, and I turn off the screen message untouched.

I know I need to delete it. Delete him. Delete our memories and move forward. That’s what I tell my clients when they’re coming into our services fresh off the heartache express. I encourage them to cleanse their lives by establishing new routines. Branching out to new restaurants or new experiences they had been denying themselves in the past. I thoroughly explain the significance of removing old photos or their previous lover’s lingering items, such as clothes or collectables. You can’t fall in love with someone new while still holding on so tightly to someone old.

God, I don’t ever wanna fall in love again.

There’s a knocking on my front door that, thankfully, pulls me from the spiral I was slipping into. I place my boot shaped mug down on the counter and promptly answer it.

Three unexpected faces force themselves to grin widely. “Hey….”

I step back to allow Art, Audrey, and Cordie into my apartment.

Avoiding everyone had been easy up until this point. Turns out, when your friends are dating, they’re easily distracted by their own relationships, leaving you to wallow in the ashes of yours in peace.

“You look like hell,” Art sighs as I shut the door behind them.

“You really do,” Cordie agrees. “That’s, what? Two-day old eyeliner and mascara?”

Oddly enough her guess is accurate. It was the only day I decided I could stomach stepping foot into the office. Thankfully, I managed to push back face to face meetings until next week, leaving this one to rifle through paperwork, study social media behavior, and cry in the privacy of my own home.

“We brought wine,” Audrey meekly announces, lifting the bottles into vision.

“I’m gonna order Chinese,” Art adds.

“And I’m gonna pick the movie since we all know the one in an emotional crisis isn’t the best candidate for choosing.” Cordie winks.

Their collective efforts urge me to smile, yet I don’t. Each one of them is displaying similar distraught postures, wrinkled foreheads, and worry ridden eyes. It’s obvious they care, however, if they would just take one long look at me, it’s more than obvious I’m not in the mood to deal with guests.

I wrap my arms around my lower stomach and sigh, “I appreciate this but-”

“Nope,” my big brother swiftly cuts me off, draping an arm around my shoulder. “You have been sulking in solitude long enough. Time with your friends and family is healthy. Especially with the level of sadness you’re feeling.”

Bitterness gets the better of me. “Shouldn’t you all be out with your boyfriends? Doing dinner or movies or picking out swatches or something?”

“Look, Carly, you’ve been the third wheel…the fifth wheel…plenty of times over the past couple of months without complaint,” Cordie begins, unexpected kindness in her tone. “You need us now, and we’re here for you.”

The tears I pushed away earlier dart to the corner of my eyes ready to be fully displayed. “I’m fine….Really.”

Scoffs escape all three of them, though it’s Art who speaks, “We may not have your highly sharpened behavior analysis skills, but we’re not morons. We can see how depressed you are. How you’re far from fine, which is completely understandable, sis. But if you want my opinion on this whole thing, I don’t think it’s over.”

I instantly shrug out of his touch and sulk towards my couch. “Just because you and Dennis have turned making up and breaking up into a sport, doesn’t mean the rest of us have.”

“Can’t believe I’m gonna say this, but I think Art is right,” Cordie states on her route to the kitchen. “While your brother is generally wrong about everything-”

“Fuck you, too, Cordie.”

“-he’s not wrong about this.” The sound of wine glasses clinking together stirs my stomach. “I’ve met Dusty,” she continues on her walk back into the living room, “and I’ve witnessed his love for you firsthand. And you know what? That’s not the type of shit you find every day. It’s the type that hits you once in a lifetime, which I think is why I’ve always been jealous of what you two have. Because when I see Dusty look at you, there is not a shred of doubt he loves you more than he loves his own life. And I want that. I want someone to look at me that way….I think we all do.”

I tuck my knees to my chest and rest my forehead on top of them.

Except he’ll never look at me like that again….

As much as I wish I could hate him or fault him for choosing his family, I can’t. If shit were the other way around and it was Art who ended up dead unexpectedly, I don’t know that I could just drop everything and rush away. I don’t know if I could abandon my parents in a time of crisis, no matter how hateful they previously were. I damn sure don’t think I could abandon two little girls right after they lost their daddy.

“Honestly, I don’t think it’s over either, Carly,” Audrey sighs from beside me. “He just said he needed space-”

“It’s over!” I bite, eyes darting up to throw daggers at each one of them. “He damn sure isn’t moving here. Not now! Not ever! And I can’t move there and tear apart their family! His mother may be the most hateful, vile person I’ve ever met, but I won’t be responsible for ripping the only living son she has away from her or her husband! And I refuse, refuse to be the reason two innocent little girls have to suffer through any more pain! Losing your father is hard enough. Losing your favorite uncle is unnecessary pain I will not inflict.”

The room falls completely silent.

“Now, I will sit on this couch, if I have to, and drink wine and eat food I can’t stomach and watch movies I probably won’t remember…but when it’s all over you will accept the truth just like I have. Dusty and I are…,” the final word in the sentence stings the entire way up, “finished. It may not be what I want, but it’s what’s best for him. Dusty’s happiness means more to me than my own, so I will do the right thing and let him go….Let him be with his family.”

Truth is, I looked at Dusty the exact same way Cordie recalls him looking at me. Unfortunately, sometimes loving someone more than yourself means having to make the ultimate sacrifice. Sometimes it means having to surrender the love you want to give, to allow them the love they need to have. Sometimes loving someone unconditionally means having to do it from an unwanted distance for an unknown amount of time. Sometimes….Sometimes it means knowing you’re going to spend the rest of your life simply praying they never forget you and being grateful they’ve learned to love again, even when you didn’t.