Coming Home

Leah followed her through the mall, nodding when she was supposed to, smiling when she was supposed to, answering when she was required to, all the while counting down the minutes until she could crawl back into her bed.

They walked through the department store, and Holly pulled dress after dress off the rack, holding it out and examining it before tossing it over her arm or hanging it back up with a shake of her head.

“I think you’ve got enough,” Leah said, gesturing toward the mountain of fabric piled over her friend’s arm.

Holly shrugged. “I don’t know that any of these are devastating, but I’ll try them on. We can always go to a different store after this.”

Please, Leah thought, please let one of them be devastating.

They walked into one of the fitting rooms, and Holly dropped the heap of dresses on the bench in the corner. “You have to be honest,” she said, pulling her shirt over her head. “Don’t yes me to death because you want to go home. If you send me to a party with Evan’s ex looking like a heifer, I’ll spend the rest of my life torturing you.”

“How will that be different from what you already do?”

Holly smiled. “There she is! Oh, how I’ve missed bitchy Leah.”

Leah smiled half-heartedly as Holly reached over and grabbed a dress off the top of the pile, handing it to Leah. “Here, put this on,” she said, taking the next one for herself.

“What? Why?”

“I don’t know. Because it’s fun to try on dresses. Humor me,” she said, pulling a dark green cocktail dress over her head.

Humor her. The quicker she’s happy, the quicker you can get out of here.

Leah stripped her clothes off and stepped into the dress, pulling it up over her torso, and Holly came behind her, zipping it up.

It was a beautiful dress—simple, but elegant, chocolate-colored and strapless, fitting snugly around her middle and flowing out softly from her hips in a billowy skirt that hit just above her knee.

“Your body looks sick in this,” Holly said.

Leah stared at her reflection: the slumped shoulders, the purplish rings under her eyes, the pallid skin, her hair flat and un-styled, her vacant stare.

She saw herself standing alone, without him at her side, and because of that, there was nothing beautiful about what she was looking at, no matter what she was wearing.

“Seriously, this is gorgeous on you,” Holly said.

“Yeah, it’s pretty,” Leah agreed, turning so Holly could unzip her. “And not that one,” she added, referencing the dress Holly was wearing. “It makes you look boxy.”

Holly’s eyes met hers in the mirror and she smiled. “That was a test, and you passed with flying colors, my darling.”

Leah shook her head and laughed softly, stepping out of the brown dress and putting it back on the hanger.

About an hour later, they were hanging Holly’s unwanted dresses on the rack outside the fitting rooms. She had chosen a red sheath dress that emphasized her incredible legs, and the color was guaranteed to turn every head in whatever room she walked into. Leah had assured her if she paired it with some platform heels and red lipstick, against the dark tone of her hair, she would most certainly be devastating.

When she picked up the brown dress, Holly turned to Leah. “You need to buy this. It looked amazing on you.”

Leah shook her head. “I have nowhere to wear a dress like this,” she said, taking it from her and hanging it on the rack.

“Maybe not right now, but you will one day. This dress needs to be on reserve in your closet. It’s too perfect on you. I’m not taking no for an answer,” she said, taking the dress off the rack and hanging it over her arm with the red one before walking to the register.

“Not taking no for an answer?” Leah mumbled to herself. “Shocking.”

“I heard that,” Holly called over her shoulder.

They paid for their dresses, and as they were walking out of the department store, Holly pressed a hand to her stomach.

“I’m starving. Can we stop and get something quick?”

Leah shrugged. “If you want.”

“I’m dying for one of those Greek salads from that place in the food court. You want one?”

“I’m not really that hungry,” Leah said.

“Get one. You can pick at it, and if you don’t finish it, you can take it home.”

Leah sighed, resigning herself to the fact that Holly was going to get her way in every aspect of today’s outing.

A few minutes later, they were sitting at a small table in the corner of the food court with their salads on plastic trays, and Holly smiled.

“Thanks for being a trouper today.”

Leah smiled softly, reaching to open her bottle of water.

“So, since I forced you out of your comfort zone and you were such a good sport about it,” Holly said as she sifted through her salad, “you can call the shots now. Do you want to talk about him, or not talk about him?”

Leah lifted her eyes to see Holly watching her as she took a bite of her salad.

The shards in her chest came to life, twisting and piercing and slicing.

God, she wanted to. She wanted to say his name. She wanted to hear his name. She wanted to talk about him every minute of every day of every week until she could make sense of everything that had happened.

Until she could figure out a way back into his heart.

But whenever she thought about him, it hurt so badly she could hardly breathe through it.

She couldn’t stand not being part of his life anymore—couldn’t stand the thought of him alone in that place. She hated picturing him in a cell, wondering if he was sad, or scared, or angry. Wondering if he was lonely. Wondering if he thought of her even a fraction of the times she thought about him.

“I feel like I can’t breathe without him,” she said, her chin trembling as the words left her mouth. “I miss him.”

“Of course you do,” Holly said. “Let yourself miss him. Don’t fight that.”

Leah nodded as two tears slipped over her lashes, and she swiped at them quickly.

“But what you’ve been doing these past few weeks? That’s not missing him. That’s mourning him. There’s a difference.”

Leah raised her eyes to Holly’s.

“And I’m sorry, but I won’t let you do that. It’s not over for you guys. So there’s nothing to mourn.”

“Holly—”

“Remember when we were in seventh grade,” Holly said, cutting her off, “and N’SYNC was going to be on TRL? And we camped out in Times Square for two days so we could see them when they arrived?”

Leah pulled her brow together as she swiped at another tear. “Yeah.”

“And you had your whole plan. Do you remember?”

The corner of Leah’s mouth lifted in a half-hearted smile. “Yeah. I was going to sing for Justin Timberlake so he would take me on tour with the band.”

Holly laughed as she took another bite of her salad. “And what happened when he finally walked by you?”

“You shoved me, and I face-planted in front of everyone.”

“Hold on,” Holly said, holding up her hand, “what happened before that?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, what happened before I pushed you?”

Leah shrugged. “Nothing.”

“Exactly,” she said. “Nothing. And why not? You had a plan. You practiced for weeks trying to make your voice sound a little less like a cat getting a root canal.”

Leah threw her napkin at Holly and she batted it away easily. “You were ready,” she said, not missing a beat. “So why didn’t you go through with it?”

“I don’t know,” Leah said, sifting through her salad. “I panicked.”

“Right. You freaked, and you bailed. So…I shoved you.”

“And I landed flat on my face in front of him with my skirt practically over my head!”

Holly pointed at Leah with her fork. “That wasn’t my fault. Who wears a skirt in the middle of January?”

A breathy laugh fell from Leah’s lips as she looked down at her salad.