Who We Could Be - Chelsea M. Cameron Page 0,22

well-meaning, it just brought all that pain to the surface.

“I’m doing well,” she said, which was her patented response. “Thank you for asking.” Monty plastered a serene smile on her face and made eye contact with me.

“Can we talk for a second?”

“Yeah, absolutely. You can have all my seconds.”

Ron rolled his eyes. “Just don’t take too many and ignore the customers looking for ‘that blue book.’” That made all of us laugh because we’d all experienced a customer who was looking for a book, but the only detail they knew about it was the color of the cover and no other identifying details.

Monty and I ducked over to a more-deserted part of the store and I leaned against a shelf.

“What’s up?”

“I’m going back to my apartment tonight. I think it’s time. You and your parents have been seriously the best, but I need to start getting back to something that’s like normal. I need to figure out how to live my life on my own again.”

Everything in me knew she was right, knew this was right. Of course she couldn’t just crash in the guest room forever. That didn’t stop me from wanting to fucking breakdown right next to a cookbook full of kale recipes.

“You should get a cat,” I said, when I trusted myself to be able to speak and not start crying and begging her to stay.

“From the cat sanctuary? Maybe I will after we get back from our trip.”

“Our bestfriendimoon,” I corrected.

She huffed out something that might be a laugh. “You know I’m not calling it that.”

“You’ll come around to my way of thinking. You always do.”

“We’ll see,” she said. “I’ve got to get back to work.”

“Thanks for the coffee,” I said, sucking the last of the watery remnants from the bottom of the cup.

“You’re welcome. I won’t see you tonight, I guess. But I’ll see you tomorrow?”

I chewed on the straw. “Sure, sounds good.”

She left and I collapsed against the shelf, fighting the urge to cry as if I was never going to see her again. Being a best friend made me really dramatic, apparently.

I needed to get my shit together.

Six

Monty

It was strange being back at my place. Tessa was right, I did need something else to be here with me. In the few weeks I’d been staying with her family, I’d gotten out of the habit of being alone. The silence didn’t give me solace. It chafed against my skin like sandpaper, making me feel itchy and uncomfortable. I kept wandering around, rearranging things, including my furniture. Since my place was so small, there weren’t a whole lot of configurations that would work with what I had, so I started thinking about getting some new things. I’d been planning on doing that anyway, so why not? At least this time I could pick everything out myself.

The initial shock of everything had worn off and I realized one harsh truth: I didn’t miss TJ. Sure, I thought about him, but the more days that passed, the less I thought about him, and the less I even remembered about him. When was the last time we had kissed? What color were his eyes, exactly? Was he funny? I didn’t know, and that was disturbing.

In the middle of the night, when I couldn’t sleep, one question ran through my mind, as if it was on repeat: why were you with him?

Why, indeed? To answer that question, I went back to the beginning. He’d asked me out, I’d said yes and then...that was it. He was my boyfriend and then my fiancé. He was the guy. That was how it worked. You graduated, you got a job, you got a guy, you got married, you had kids. That was the plan, that was the dream, that was everything I’d ever wanted.

Right?

But was he really what I wanted? I didn’t have an answer for that.

If it wasn’t TJ, who was it? Honestly, the idea of meeting someone new and trying to date made me sick to my stomach. I’d even scanned online dating sites, because who was I going to meet here that I didn’t already know? None of the guys around here was even remotely appealing.

So I went back to thinking about getting a cat until I was exhausted enough to fall asleep.

“HI, I’M HOPING YOU can help me,” someone said, as I was dusting off the computers while monitoring a few kids who were looking things up online and giggling. The library had lots of internet filters, but