“I dunno. It was something like ‘Please give me another chance. I swear I’ll get it right.’”
Owen silently turns away from me. I can hear him breathing. In. Out. In. Out. Like he’s trying to remind the air where to go. And then, “You never mentioned him.”
I sit up, wiping my eyes. “What?”
“You never specifically mentioned him. You said ‘I swear I’ll get it right.’”
“I think the ‘him’ was implied,” I say defensively.
“What if it wasn’t?” Owen challenges. “What if this day was never about getting him back?”
His question renders me speechless. I never even considered the possibility that this wasn’t about Tristan.
Owen’s next words are barely a whisper. “What if it was about getting yourself back?”
“Now you really sound like an inspirational GIF.”
He laughs and stands up. At first, I think he’s going to leave and I feel a flutter of panic, but instead he reaches into the pocket of his jeans and produces two fortune cookies.
“Choose your tasty fortune!” His voice is artificially cheerful.
I shake my head. “My fortune is bleak. I don’t need a cookie to tell me that.”
He nudges his hand toward me. “C’mon.”
I oscillate between the two, finally deciding on the one on the left. I toss it next to me on the bed and collapse onto my back again. Owen sits down and cracks his open.
“If your desires are not extravagant, they will be granted,” I recite in a bored voice.
He laughs. “My desires are always extravagant, but that’s not what it says.”
“What?!” I bolt upright and grab the tiny strip of paper from his hand.
Tomorrow will bring unexpected things.
It changed. Owen’s fortune changed.
But how? Why?
I rummage through my tangled sheets until I find my cookie, scrambling to get it open and read the message inside.
All we ever really get is today.
“Owen!” I exclaim, bounding to my feet.
He’s startled by my outburst. “What?”
“I think you might be right.”
“Of course I’m right. I’m always right.”
“You’re not always right.”
“Uh, objection. Yes, I am.”
“Objection. I can think of plenty of times you were wrong.”
“Like when?”
“I have two words for you: sheep’s milk.”
“Withdrawn,” he mumbles. “But, hey, speaking of me being right, did you ever watch the season premiere of Assumed Guilty?”
“No,” I lie. “Do you want to watch it with me now?”
Owen glances at the time on his phone. “It’s too late, isn’t it?”
Maybe some things aren’t fixable.
Maybe everything is fixable.
Or maybe it’s just about knowing which things actually need fixing.
I shake my head and flash him a smile. “I don’t think it’s too late.”
The Way We Were (Part 6)
Sunday night …
It wasn’t the movie I wanted to watch, but once Tristan pressed Play and snuggled up next to me, it didn’t matter anymore. All I cared about was having him next to me. It was our first night alone together in a long time. Whack-a-Mole had had a busy summer. They were booking gigs like crazy, but now that school was back in session things had started to slow down. I knew Tristan was anxious about that, but I was secretly grateful. It had been an exhausting few months, spending my nights in clubs, and my days in Jackson’s garage listening to the guys practice and strategizing on marketing ideas.
Then school started a month ago. My schedule was crazy and my homework load was crazier, which made it hard to get together. At school, we were back under the social microscope. I knew everyone was just counting the days, waiting until that inevitable moment when Tristan would dump me like he dumped every other girl, and just knowing that made me all the more determined to prevent it from happening.
But now, we were finally alone. Tristan’s mom was on a date and we had his house to ourselves. I suggested a movie because it seemed so low-key, especially after our whirlwind summer of crowded rooms and loud music.
Although the real reason I suggested the movie was that we’d just spent twenty minutes in his bedroom in almost total silence. I couldn’t decide if something was on Tristan’s mind or if we had simply run out of things to say to each other.
Tristan chose some action flick that he had missed in the theaters. I would have preferred something a little more romantic, but it didn’t matter. As long as we were together.
We were only twelve minutes into the movie when the alerts started going off on his phone. There hadn’t even been a single explosion in the film yet, but his phone was already blowing up.
I