The sobs come heavy again and I hear Presley at the door. She pushes it open and watches me fall apart. Shooting a glare at Fenton, she sits next to me on my bed and holds my hand.
“You need to leave,” Pres fires at him. “Now.”
He gives me a sad smile and turns to go. Before he’s out of sight, he pivots on his heels and faces me one last time. “I will get your brother back. If it’s the last thing I do, your brother will come home. And when you start to question that, feel the necklace around your neck and remember what you know about me.” He holds my gaze for a long second, his eyes telling me a million words that I can’t process. He then looks at Presley. “If she needs anything at all, call me. Please. I’ll fix this. Somehow, I’ll fix this.” He takes a deep breath and tries to smile, but fails. “And Brynne?”
“Yeah?” I choke out.
“I wasn’t just pretending to fall in love with you. I really did.”
He disappears and I crumble in Presley’s arms.
The steam from my coffee billows from the top of my cup. The steam rises, making a quick rise and then disappearing into the air. Anyone watching me sit at the kitchen counter would think I’m completely enthralled with it. But, in reality, I’m not really even sitting here. I’m somewhere else, mentally, anyway, trying to put the pieces of this jigsaw puzzle back together. And along with it, pieces of my heart.
It’s been three days since Fenton walked out of my house. It’s been three days since I really had anything to eat and the waistband of my pajama bottoms are hanging loose off my hips. It’s been that many days, too, since I’ve been out of the house. I don’t even know the last time I brushed my teeth.
I roll my tongue across my mouth and make a face. Lifting myself off the stool, I head to the bathroom and run a toothbrush around my teeth. The energy it takes is more than I have. Lifting the coffee to my mouth earlier, which only happened once because the taste repulsed me for the first time in my life, took more gumption than I could manage.
The one constant in the last three days is the elephant necklace. I see it dangling in my reflection, lying flat against my sternum. I’ve tried to remove it, attempted to force myself to take it off and mail it back to Fenton, but I don’t. I can’t. The weight of it against my skin, the reassurance of it on my body brings me a bit of comfort. I hate that it does. Even so, it’s a tangible memory of a happy time in my life, even if it was under false pretenses.
“Hey, you,” Presley says from the doorway. “You okay?”
“Yeah.”
“You work this afternoon, right?”
I nod, wishing I could call off, but I can’t because I spent all of my vacation and sick days when I went away with Fenton.
“I hate seeing you like this,” she sighs, leaning against the doorjamb. “What can we do to perk you back up?”
“Make it all go away. Make me not lose my phone in the bananas. Make my brother listen to me and not go to Africa.”
“Has Fenton called you at all?”
“Nope.” I lean against the counter, my shoulders slumping. “Not that I wanted him to, but . . .”
“But you wanted him to,” she finishes. “It’s okay, Brynnie. It’s normal to feel like that.”
“But I shouldn’t. I should want to gouge his eyes out with a fiery poker.”
“Well, if his poker was as fiery as you say . . .”
“Now’s not the time for jokes, Pres.”
She laughs anyway, almost making me crack a grin. “Maybe you should call him.”
“And say what?”
“I don’t know. Say whatever you’re thinking.”
I walk by her and into the living room. “That’s the problem, Pres. I don’t know what I’m thinking. I have no freaking clue. One minute I’m over here,” I say, motioning to my right. “And the next, I’m way over there. Like in the kitchen over there. I can’t get a grip.”
I sink onto the sofa and let my head fall in my hands.
“You want to know what I think?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Not really,” she laughs, sitting in the chair across from me. “I think you feel so confused because you fell in love with him.”
“No,” I say, jerking my face to hers. “I’ve decided that I couldn’t have fallen in love with him.”
“Right,” she laughs sarcastically. “Think about it. If he was just the stepping stone from Grant to whomever, then you’d have the loathing of Cashmere that you’re trying to have.”
“I’m not trying to have it.”
“You are, Brynne.”
I try to keep my features smooth, to not let her know she just pegged me. Because it’s true. I’ve been trying to hate him and as the days go on, it just gets harder. I think back to him saying he loved me and to the way he held me, looked at me, felt against me, and it’s just so hard to hate him. Nothing I experienced when I was with him makes me think he’s hateful or careless or distrustful. Except that he is who he is.
But how can I trust him? How can I trust anything he said?
“What if he really didn’t know who you were,” Presley says, feeling me out.
“It doesn’t matter.”