Claire and I talk for over an hour before we go our separate ways. I still don’t feel like returning to my apartment, so I walk to the studio to blow off some steam.

My fingers are itching for me to pull my phone out and call Alex, but I need to give her some space and get my own shit figured out. How can I be everything she needs when I have nothing to give?

I walk into the studio and play some Staind on my iPod; I need to work out some agitation, and sculpting to my favorite band seems like a f**king great idea. I notice the paintings Alex did awhile back sitting up against the wall. She never showed them to me. In fact, she was pretty secretive about them, which only spiked my curiosity.

Deciding I have nothing to lose, I walk over to them and pick up the first one. It’s me standing in front of a window with a cup of coffee in my hand. I recognize everything about it from my expression to the label on the side of my faded blue jeans. She pays attention to every detail when we’re together. I do the same, but instead of observing with my eyes, I do it with my nose. I can smell her hair everywhere I go. I close my eyes, and I can smell her like she’s standing right in front of me.

When I open them again, she’s nowhere to be found. She’s just a dream to me again.

I turn the other one around to find a painting of myself sculpting. The detail of it all steals my breath away. She’s talented, there’s no doubt about that, and the way she sees me…it’s beautiful.

I set the paintings back up against the wall and start to sculpt. I’ve never tried to sculpt someone I actually know. I’ve always made people without faces. People with little emotion, but this is different. I’m trying to sculpt Alex as I see her.

She’s beautiful, yet simple.

Funny.

Smart.

Honest.

Forgiving.

God, I hope she forgives me for all the things I said to her tonight. I threw years’ worth of frustration at her. She didn’t deserve it. It should have been reserved for someone else. Actually, it shouldn’t have been reserved at all. I should have let it out a long time ago.

I work all night long, sculpting to perfect every detail. When the sun finally starts to peek through the window, I’m done with phase one. I step back and take a look. So far, I think it might be the best piece of work I’ve ever done. It’s amazing what happens when I pour my heart into something. Alex has my whole heart.

I walk back to my apartment instead of stopping a cab. The fresh air feels great, and the city this early in the morning is quiet. With every step I take, I try to convince myself that everything will be okay… Everything has to be okay.

I’m going to go to sleep for a few hours, and work at earning my forgiveness. Even if it takes me the rest of my life, I’m going to show Alex how sorry I am for being such a jerk last night.

When I wake up in the afternoon, the phone is ringing. No one ever calls my home phone. Who would be calling me?

When the person on the other end starts talking, I know this phone call will change my life forever.

Chapter Seventeen

“How are you feeling?” Jade asks, lying next to me in her guest bed. The minute she picked me up at the train station yesterday, I crumbled. I thought when I decided to stop running from Dane nothing would come between us. I guess I was wrong.

The look on his face when he walked into Reid’s office burns in my mind. Every day, I try to capture a moment to paint later, but this one I wanted to forget. I swear if putting that face on canvas and then painting it over in black would make it go away, I would. Life’s not that simple, though. Life was so much easier when I didn’t feel, but now that I can, it’s a constant up and down. I never know how many bumps and turns my daily ride is going to take.

“I’m exhausted,” I say honestly. I cried so much when he asked me to leave, then the whole way here in the train, and then in bed after Jade tucked me in. I’m surprised I even have the ability to cry anymore.

“I’m sure he’ll call soon and tell you he messed up, and that he wants you to come home,” she says, combing her fingers through my hair. His face flashes through my mind again, and I want to tell her she’s wrong, but it would kill the last bit of hope I have left in my heart.

We lay wrapped up in our own thoughts for several minutes. I don’t know where to go from here. I think back to this time last year, when I was just getting ready to leave for college. So much has changed. I met Jade, and she opened my eyes to things I had never seen before. She taught me that life’s too short to follow someone else’s dream. She taught me what having someone care about me feels like, no matter what I’ve done

This time last year, Ryan was a pivotal part of who I was. He was a symbol of what my parents wanted for me. A symbol of what I was willing to sacrifice to make everyone happy, and now he’s back where he belonged from the beginning...as my friend. We don’t talk often, but he does text every now and then.

And finally, there’s Dane. I’ve known him for seven months now, and they’ve been the craziest seven months of my life. I spent so much time fighting myself, fighting him, and now he’s fighting himself. Even if he isn’t where my story ends, he will always be an important piece of me. He breathed life into me, and somehow I did the same for him.

The tears start flowing freely again. What if we’ve shared our last kiss? What if I never sleep in his bed again? I can’t even go there right now. A part of me wants to find Reid and yell at him until I feel nothing, but he’s not the problem. The problem is Dane and his lingering doubts that we’re not meant to be.

“Do you want to go sit by the pool for awhile?” Jade asks, pulling me away from my thoughts.

I shake my head. The pool is the last place I want to hang out right now. There are always happy couples down there, and I don’t want to be around them.

“How about the Summer Fest? We can go get some fattening food, eat until we don’t feel good, then come home and go to bed. How does that sound?”

“I’d rather not be around people,” I say, pulling my knees into my chest.

“Come on. You need to get out of here for awhile.” She pats me on the knee and waits for me to sit up. I do it, not because I want to, but because I know she won’t leave me alone until I do.

In my rush to leave the apartment yesterday, I barely grabbed anything. I have a backpack with some pajamas, one set of clothes, and a toothbrush. Jade takes one look at the items on the bed and hops off to her room to grab me an emerald green maxi dress. I could care less what I look like today, but I put it on to appease her and the rest of the people in the Hamptons. My hair is a mess because I took a shower right before bed last night. I pull it up into a tight bun, deciding against makeup.

We hop into Jade’s car and head toward the festival. I roll my window down to let the fresh air hit my face in an attempt to relax and clear my head. I think about sending Dane another quick text, but decide against it. I know he’s upset and the only thing that’s going to fix it is time.

I should call Gwen and talk to her about Reid, but I need to calm down first. Everything makes sense now, but I want to know more. Why did they end? Was he her first love?

“We’re here,” Jade announces, putting the car in park.

I look around at all the people walking around and take a few deep breaths to relax myself. “Okay, I’m ready,” I say, reaching for the door handle.

“Hey, if you want to leave, just tell me, and we’ll go,” she says, concern written all over her face.

“Let’s hit up the food tents and we’ll go from there.”

We start with crab cakes, followed by fried shrimp and cheese tartlets. My stomach is about to explode, but that doesn’t stop me from going to the gelato stand. I feel better, at least temporarily because the pain in my heart has been replaced by pain in my stomach. We move to the beach to listen to some live music. Jade lays a fleece blanket down and I lay with my hands tucked under my head. The soft jazz music runs through my body, allowing my mind to run free. I start to drift to sleep when I remember something Dane said to me a while back.

“Happiness isn’t something you just find yourself; someone has to breathe it into you. That’s why people who are lonely never seem happy.”

And he accomplished that a long time ago, but he didn’t realize he also had the ability to take it all away.

Dane and I have both grown up. We were broken and damaged, but now we’re slowly allowing ourselves to see the world differently. It’s just hard to keep going when we constantly take a step backward.

When my parents gave me the ultimatum when we were in Greenwich, I backed down too easily. I wasn’t thinking about how it affected me, but I was thinking about how my actions affected them. I knew it would hurt Dane, but I did it anyway. Now it’s Dane’s turn to push me away, to cut me deep. I should be angry with him for not trusting me, but I know I’m a contributor to his doubts. I haven’t always been there when I should have been. Sometimes I think he’s just waiting for me to leave him again. If we get another chance, I plan on spending every day showing him we belong and convincing him that we have to work harder to keep everything together.

“Alexandra Riley, is that you?” My heart starts to beat out of my chest as I slowly open my eyes to see my mother standing in front of me. What is she doing here?

I shield my eyes from the sun with my hand as I glance up at my mother, who looks impeccable as always. She has a navy one-piece swimsuit covered by an expensive red silk sarong. Her eyes are covered with her favorite Dior sunglasses, but I can tell she’s judging me behind the tinted shades.

“Are you going to say something, or are you just going to stare at me?” she smiles, taking in the length of my body.

“I don’t really have anything to say to you,” I say, sitting up on my elbows.

Jade, who had been sleeping beside me, wakes and looks up as I watch her eyes double in size. “Shit,” she mutters under her breath.

My mom removes her sunglasses and visibly rolls her eyes at Jade before returning her attention to me. “Are you ready to come home yet, Alexandra? You look awful, but I see you’ve lost weight which looks really good on you.”