said. She grabbed a few bags of groceries and made her way to the kitchen.
“You should have seen how jealous she was. If you ask me, that girl still has a thing for her husband,” Rainey whispered.
I smiled. “Well then we’ll have to see about setting them up again, huh?”
We gave each other a conspiratorial grin and followed Gabby into the kitchen.
“What kind of pizza did you get?” I asked.
“Hawaiian. Your favorite,” Rainey said from somewhere behind me.
I couldn’t believe they thought my favorite pizza was Hawaiian. Hawaiian was Luke’s favorite pizza. My favorite was pepperoni. Had Luke and I been so absorbed in each other that people couldn’t even tell us apart?
“I’m not very hungry,” I said.
“Sure thing,” Gabby said as she unpacked the junk food.
She and Rainey found a place to put everything while I made the excuse to go check on my dad.
“Hey, Mal,” Dad said from his spot on the bed when I entered his room. He saw the look on my face and patted the space beside him. “What’s wrong?”
“Were Luke and I the same person?” I asked without a thought.
“What? When you were together? A little bit, yeah. That’s part of the reason I encouraged you to go to Boston. I knew he wouldn’t want to leave Casper. As much as I liked Luke, I also knew you needed to figure out who you were.”
I took his hand. “You knew Luke and I would break up?”
“I figured it was a likely possibility. Time apart has a way of making people truly realize what they want out of life. I never suspected you wouldn’t want to come back at all, but that was part of the risk I took. I wanted you to know who you could be without Luke so that if you were with him, you would recognize your own potential. And hopefully, so would he.”
“My dad, the philosopher,” I said.
It was true. He knew so much more about me than I knew about myself. He’d known I would need to separate myself from Luke in order to figure out who I was and what I wanted. For a while, I thought I wanted my life in Boston, but now I was starting to see how much I wanted to be in Casper.
“Dad, I’m going to start looking for a job here,” I said with resolve. “I think one of the girls I went to high school with is one of the managers at the bank. Maybe they’ll hire me.”
“Are you sure that’s what you want?” he asked.
“Yes.” I was surer of the decision to move home than I’d been about anything in my life. “I want to move home. Permanently.”
His eyes lit up and his smile was wide. “I’m glad to have you back, baby girl.”
He pulled me into a hug. I blinked away tears but I didn’t mind. They were tears of happiness. I was finally moving on with my life instead of running away from it.
“I’m happy to come home,” I whispered into his t-shirt.
When he finally begged me to let him sleep, I meandered back into the living room and found Rainey and Gabby with an open bottle of wine watching reruns of Friends. They both stared at me.
“What’s wrong?” Rainey asked.
“Nothing. In fact, I guess I should tell you guys. I’m moving back to Casper for good.” I smiled.
They both shrieked and jumped off the couch to envelop me in a hug. It felt right.
“What made you change your mind?” Gabby asked once we were settled on the couch.
“My dad. He wanted me to be able to really choose this life, much like he did when he was my age. And being back just makes me realize how much I’ve missed it. I want to spend the rest of my life here.”
Another round of shrieks and hugs had me laughing hysterically. Once we calmed down, we watched Sixteen Candles as if we were all fourteen again.
Several movies later, we were somewhat passed out around the living room and on the verge of sleep. When the house phone rang, we all jumped.
“Who the hell is calling this late?” Rainey asked.
She was curled into a ball on the floor while Gabby and I shared the couch. I rolled off the couch and managed to get to the phone on the fourth ring.
“Hello?” I muttered into the receiver.
“Mallory Wells?” a male voice asked.
I cleared my throat in an attempt to clear my head. “Yes, that’s me.”
“I have Lukas Bates, Christopher Baker,