My life had been reduced to six cardboard boxes.
Sound familiar?
Well, it was familiar, only this time, I was moving out of my parents’ apartment.
It’d been two weeks since I’d last seen Will. Two weeks since I’d quit my job at his practice and ended our relationship. Time had nearly stood still for the first few days. They’d gone about as awful as anyone could imagine they’d go for a twenty-nine-year-old woman, fresh off of another failed relationship, jobless, and still living with her parents. But, eventually, after I’d had time to isolate myself from the world and lick my wounds to a tolerable level of pain, I’d found a way to pick myself up off of the floor and put myself back on shaky, unstable feet.
It’d taken baby steps, but slowly and with determination, I found things to focus on, things to fill my days so that my mind didn’t have much time to think about Will. And it had worked for the most part, besides when I’d lie in bed at night, without the warmth and comfort of his arms. It was those quiet, lonely moments when I’d realize just how much I missed him. Just how much I still loved him. But before I could do something rash like show up to his apartment and beg for him to take me back, I’d remember just how much he’d hurt me.
How much I’m willing to give up for one of his stupid smiles.
And that was still a very present reminder of why I needed to look forward, to move on.
My frugal money habits had turned out to be a positive force. Before quitting my job, I’d managed to save enough funds so I could put down a deposit on an apartment in SoHo. Of course, I was renting for cheap from a friend of the family and had only enough reserves to pay bills for six months until I figured out what my next career step would be, but it was something.
I wouldn’t say life was good, but I was doing everything I could to make it better.
“Melody,” my mother said as she peeked inside her work-out room, where I was putting the last of my clothes inside an empty box. “Do you want me to box up the microwave for you?”
I smiled and shook my head. “Thanks, Mom, but I don’t need your microwave.”
She’d been at this line of questioning for the past two hours. Like clockwork, every fifteen minutes, Janet would peek past the door and try to give me something from their apartment. First, it was the coffee table. Then it was the sofa. Although, Bill quickly interjected his opposition to that. My father lived for that leather sofa, and the worn-in print of his ass on the seat beside the window proved he’d spent more time on that piece of furniture than anywhere else in the apartment.
Basically, she’d been trying to give me everything but the kitchen sink. Though, I wouldn’t have been surprised if she eventually offered to pack that up in a box, too.
Janet sighed and leaned her head against the doorframe. “I just want to help you somehow.”
“Mom, you’ve already helped me enough,” I said with a thankful smile. “Don’t worry, I’m a big girl. I’ll be just fine on my own.”
“I guess I should just be happy that you’re only moving a twenty-minute subway ride away instead of all the way across the country.”
I grinned. “Exactly.”
She slid open the door and walked toward me with a small white envelope in her hands. “Here,” she said as she held it out toward me, and I tilted my head to the side in confusion.
“What is this?”
“Just a little something your father and I wanted to give you.”
“Mom, seriously, you guys don’t—”
She cut me off with a raise of her hand. “We do, actually. We want to give this to you.”
I stared at the envelope. “I know it’s money, Mom.”
“Yeah, so?” She shrugged. “We’re proud of you, Melody. And we just wanted to give you a little extra funds so that you have the time to find a job that you really love.”
“Wow… I don’t know what to say…”
“You don’t need to say anything right now,” she said with a soft smile. “Because there’s actually someone here to see you.”
Will?
My heart jumped into my throat at the mere thought of his name, but then it quickly plummeted to my feet when the person who replaced my mother in the doorway wasn’t him.
“Need any help packing?” Georgia asked with a friendly grin and a motherly hand resting on top of her belly.
“What are you doing here?” I asked and hated that my voice held a hint of disappointment.
She shrugged. “Just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”
“Did Will send you here?” The words flew from my lips before I could stop them.
Jesus. Why couldn’t my heart realize Will and I were done?
“No.” She shook her head, but I didn’t miss the faint spark that brightened her eyes and had her lips cresting into a soft smile. “Actually, Will didn’t send me. I’m here because, even though you and my brother are no longer together, you’re my friend and I want to be here.”
Even though, Will and I had broken up, I’d kept in contact with Georgia and Cassie, mostly through text messages and phone calls, but also because those two were persistent as hell. So, it wasn’t a surprise that she knew I was getting ready to move, but it was a bit of a surprise that she’d shown up, offering to help me move. Packing up boxes and moving shit didn’t seem like the kind of strenuous activity someone who was four weeks away from her due date would want to engage in…
I searched her expression for an answer, and the nervous rap of her fingers against her belly had me wondering if she was here for more than just support.
“That’s…uh…really sweet of you,” I answered, but I really wanted to ask if this was some kind of ploy to get Will and me back together.
She flashed a knowing look. “You don’t believe me.”
“I guess I sort of believe you?” Honestly, I wasn’t one hundred percent certain, but considering Georgia had schemed a few times just during the short time Will and I had been together, I wouldn’t put anything past her.
“Trust me, I don’t do favors for my brother.” She giggled nervously, and my eyebrows quirked up. Bingo. She was definitely here to be Dr. Relationship and try to fix what had already been broken.
I grinned. “You really are a terrible liar.”
“Ugh,” she groaned. “And I thought I was getting better at it.”
I laughed at that, and she offered an apologetic smile.
“Look,” she explained and sat down in my favorite cozy reading chair that had been pushed haphazardly aside to the front of the room. “I’m here for both you and Will.”
I flashed a skeptical look, and she held both hands in the air.
“I’m being completely honest.”
“So you’re here to convince me to get back together with your brother?”
She grinned. “Well, sort of, but mostly I’m just here because I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“Promise?”
She nodded, and this time, as her eyes softened and creased at the corners, I believed her.
“So, where did you end up renting an apartment?”
“I got real fucking lucky,” I answered. “A friend of the family has offered to let me rent out one of their many investment properties in SoHo for an insanely low rent.”
“That’s amazing.”
“I know, right?” I agreed as I used packing tape to close the filled box. “I’m excited to have my own place again.”
“I couldn’t imagine having to move back in with Dick and Savannah after being on my own.”
“Trust me, it’s fucking terrible,” I said with exasperation in my eyes. “Honestly, I think Bill and Janet could give Dick and Savannah a run for their money in the inappropriate department.”
Georgia laughed. “That’s almost hard to believe. My mother is literally the most inappropriate person I know.”
I grinned. “Believe me, it’s no wonder they’re friends.”
I couldn’t deny it made me feel sad to think of how well our families got along. Deep down, before Will and I had broken up, my heart had already been convinced that we were a forever kind of relationship.
“He misses you, you know,” Georgia said into the quiet room, and I glanced up to meet her eyes. “He’s been a complete mess since you ended things.”
“I wish things were different.”
“I know from personal experience that sometimes things aren’t always what you think they are.”
I tilted my head to the side, and she smiled softly.
“Kline and I,” she explained. “Before we got engaged, I’d ended things with him out of assumptions. They were very, very wrong assumptions. And luckily for me, he didn’t give up on us.”
“He fought for you guys to get back together?”
She smiled like a woman who was madly in love with her husband. “Like you wouldn’t believe.”
The sad thing was, despite my happiness that Kline and Georgia had managed to find their way back to one another, all I could think was that if Will had been trying to fight for me, for us, I hadn’t even given him the opportunity to do so. Since the moment I’d left his office, I hadn’t answered a single one of his phone calls, texts, and one night, when he’d stopped by my parents’ place, I’d made Janet tell him I wasn’t home.
And the worst part of it all, I hated how miserable it made me feel.
I hated that there was a tiny little voice inside my head that whispered, Did I make a mistake?