As awful as it sounds, programming my phone to reject Garrett’s calls and messages is the best thing I ever did for myself. He can’t reach out to me—well, he can, but I’m not going to see—so I don’t have to think about it or make decisions about it or feel like I’m being stabbed in the heart every time he calls.

Hell, for all I know, he hasn’t called.

I’ve spent the last week wandering around the house sort of dazed. Garrett permeates everything. He’s been a fixture in this house with me for a long as I can remember, and every room holds memories of him. I took all the pictures of him—and of him and me—down from the big corkboard in my room, but there’s still an army of framed photos on the living room built-ins: Garrett mugging for the camera at Six Flags, Garrett watching as I open his gift to me last Christmas, both of us sound asleep at maybe three years old in a playpen in front of the fireplace in the living room. It’s a series of gut-punches, and they don’t seem to get any easier.

And then there are other things that are just absurd—they don’t hurt, exactly, but they make me hyper-aware of that space where something is missing. I think about him when I put on deodorant, because he was the one who told me about the brand I use now. I think of him when I run to the grocery store, because I make a point of going a different way than I used to, so I can avoid driving by his house. I skipped past Age of Ultron on Netflix the other day and thought about his lifelong, enormous crush on Scarlett Johansson.

I threw away the Bob Ross bobblehead he bought me. I mean, I’m not kidding when I say “absurd.”

Twenty-plus years breaks down into literally thousands of shared memories, funny stories, remember-whens, and inside jokes. His loss is unfathomable, incalculable.

I know I’m going to be okay. But it sucks so much.

Today, though, for the first time, I can sort of see how it will be. It hurts, but it hurts less—noticeably less. I think there will probably be moments where it gets bad again before it gets better, but for the first time in a while, I woke up feeling like I really need to do something other than sit around feeling bad for myself. So, after breakfast, I called Bri and asked her to come over this afternoon. Now, somehow, it’s already afternoon, and I’m sitting on my bed in a towel, trying to get up the energy to socialize.

There’s a part of me that wishes I hadn’t invited her, but I can’t hide from everyone forever. A visit with Bri will be good for me. I pull on some sweats and head downstairs.

Mom looks up from her crossword puzzle and smiles at me when I walk into the kitchen. I’ve been wondering if, in her heart, she isn’t a little tired of me moping around, but she’s been nothing but positive and supportive.

“Bri’s coming over,” I say, sitting down next to her.

“It will be lovely to see her. What are you planning to do?”

“I actually just wanted to maybe make some brownies or cookies or something?” I think I’ve gained five pounds this week, eating my feelings. Actually, given the alarming amount of food I’ve consumed, I think I’m eating five or six other people’s feelings, as well.

“I think your dad used the last of the cocoa.” She gets up and heads past me and around the counter. A few minutes rattling around in the cupboards and she nods. “Yeah, no more cocoa. Cookies are doable. You want me to make myself scarce?”

I don’t know what I ever did to deserve her. My mom is just the most amazing mother in the world. “Why don’t you stay? We haven’t all made cookies together since probably freshman year.”

She smiles and leans over the counter to rub my upper arm lightly. “A lot has changed, but girls still need cookies,” she says.

“And their moms.”

“And their moms.” She turns back and starts pulling ingredients out of the cupboard, but not before I see the gleam of tears in her eyes.

I mentally kick myself. I’m not the only one who’s lost someone here. Garrett was her family, too. I go over and wrap my arms around her from behind. “I’m sorry, Mom.”

She turns and hugs me back. “Oh, baby girl. No. You’ve done nothing to be sorry for.”

I sit back down on my stool and watch her gather ingredients for several kinds of cookies. She pulls out all the bowls we’ll need, and the cookie sheets from the thin cabinet beside the stove.

“I think that’s everything,” she says.

The back door opens and Bri comes in, smiling. It’s like she brings the sun with her; the whole room brightens, and mom’s face goes back to being happy again. I could kiss Bri for that alone.

Instead, I pull her down on the stool beside mine and point at a cookie scoop. “You’re on drop cookies,” I say, “so sit for a bit while we get stuff ready.”

Mom mixes up the first batch of dough—chocolate chip—and I pass the bowl to Bri. The second batch will be sugar cookies, and those go through the cookie press; that’s my job. We fall into an easy rhythm; despite not having done this for many years, we’re veterans of mass cookie production. Bake sales, potlucks, just-because—we’ve made a hell of a lot of cookies.

And if my eyes sting a bit when Mom says “I don’t believe we’ll be having macadamia nut” —Garrett’s favorite—well, that’s okay. I’m allowed to have feelings. And eat them, in the form of six or seven dozen cookies.

We can’t avoid the topic forever. As she pulls the first sheet of perfect, slightly underdone chocolate chip cookies out of the oven, Bri asks, “Have you heard anything from Garrett?”

“I told you, I blocked him.” The cookies smell amazing, but I know they need a few more minutes to cool before I can start eating them—and my feelings along with them, of course.

“Yeah, well, did his car break down?” she huffs.

“He wouldn’t just come by,” I say. I press out a star-shaped sugar cookie just a little too forcefully, and the press globs out too much dough. I scrape that one off the cookie sheet and unscrew the cookie press to pack the dough back in. “I told him we weren’t friends, and I didn’t want to see him.”

She pulls a clean cookie sheet toward her and starts scooping dough onto it. “And Garrett always does what you say? Let’s not forget, you told him not to call you, but you still blocked his number in case he didn’t listen.”

“Coming over to my house is different,” I say.

Mom clears her throat. “He came by the day after … you know, after the double date.”

I turn and stare at her. I think my mouth might be literally hanging open. “He what?”

“He came by that next morning, before you got up.” She shrugs a little. “Your father and I spoke to him, and we told him not to come here again, until and unless you changed your mind and asked him to.”

My mind is whirling. Why would he do that? What could he possibly think he could say that would make up for playing with me the way he did?

But I keep pressing cookies out like it’s no big deal. “What did he say?”

“Not much, actually. Basically okay, and that he was sorry he’d upset you.”

“That’s it?”

“Your father wasn’t in the mood to entertain a lot of chit-chat from him,” she says wryly. “I think Garrett was grateful to escape relatively unscathed, and we were very clear with him. I love that boy almost like he’s my own—but what he did to you is wrong. He took advantage of you.”

“Whoa, hold up.” I set the cookie press on the counter. “That’s not what happened at all. I told you, I wanted—”

“I know what you told me,” she says. “And I’m not talking about … about assault. I’m just saying that obviously you weren’t making great decisions, and he should have respected that.”

“Great or not, they were my decisions,” I say. “Nobody took advantage.”

“He took advantage of your trust,” she insists. “And then treated you badly because he didn’t want to face the consequences of his actions.”

Bri passes me a warm cookie. “She’s got a point. I’ve known Garrett a long time, and I never would have pegged him for being selfish and shitty like this.”

“He wasn’t,” I say, taking a bite and chewing while I think. It occurs to me that there’s some irony in defending Garrett when these are the exact things I’m mad about, but they’ve got it wrong. “He wasn’t being selfish. He just … it just happened. We were both into it—and then, in hindsight, it was a mistake. We agreed.”

“Did you?” Mom says. “Because it sounds to me like that was Garrett’s line.”

I take another bite of my cookie and swallow with some difficulty. “It was. But I agreed with him. I couldn’t agree with him fast enough.”

“Why, sweetie?”

Tears spring to my eyes—tears I thought I’d cried out days ago—and I tell them the truth, which I haven’t said out loud until this moment. “Because I was embarrassed,” I say, furiously blinking the tears away. “Because I thought everything was wonderful and we would be different, and here he was just saying he wanted to go back to how it was.” I shrug. “It was like he didn’t know what he was supposed to do, so he—”

“He’s supposed to take care of you,” Mom says, “and protect you. Not be the one to hurt you.” She goes back to mixing up the third batch of cookies, stirring furiously with a rubber spatula, clearly taking her anger at Garrett out on the poor peanut butter cookie dough.

“Yeah,” Bri chimes in. “Taking care of you has been, like, his whole thing. Hell of a time to forget it.”

And suddenly I’ve just had it. Had. It.

“Wait a minute,” I say. “Seriously, wait just a minute. I want to say this, and it’s important that you hear me—both of you.”

Both of them look at me.

“You keep saying the same things Garrett said. That he’s supposed to take care of me. Supposed to protect me. I’m not a sick kid anymore. I don’t need to be protected.”

“Beck—” Bri begins.

“No, I said listen. I’m so glad you all love me so much—how lucky am I? But this has to stop.” And finally the tears fall. “It’s this exact way of thinking that caused all this trouble in the first place. If Garrett hadn’t decided to tie himself in knots over how he’s supposed to behave with me, he could have just … been with me.”

Mom stops stirring and sets her spatula down on the counter. “Is that what you want?”

“I don’t know what I want,” I say. “I didn’t even have time to think about it. But I felt like … that night, I felt like something had clicked. Like this was how we were meant to be.” I sit heavily on a stool, tears still streaming and feeling stupid as hell.

Mom hands me a tissue, and Bri hands me another cookie. Typical. I laugh through my tears.

“Do you want to be with him?” Bri asks.

I shake my head. “He doesn’t want to be with me, and that’s how that is. But we can’t stay friends, and that hurts so much.”

“You’ll be okay, you know,” my mom says, wrapping an arm around my shoulders. “You’re so tough, sweetie. You kicked cancer’s ass. What’s a little heartbreak?”

I smile at her, lean my head on her shoulder. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For saying that I’m tough. For seeing that I’m tough.” I wrap an arm around Bri for good measure. “I really am going to be okay. Because I’ve got you guys.”

And I know it’s true. No matter what I’ve lost, I’m blessed to have these people, this life.

Feeling more at peace, I pick my cookie press back up. Mom and Bri go back to their prep stations, and I squeeze out another star-shaped sugar cookie. Time to get on with my life.