Into You Series: The Complete Collection

23. Saria

CHAPTER 23

SARIA

M y mind hasn’t stopped racing since last night. So much so that I found myself scribbling a note for Harry at three in the morning then driving home, where I’ve been packing for the past four hours. I stopped to go for a run in hopes of clearing my thoughts, but all it did was make the brain fog higher definition instead of getting rid of it.

I have to leave. I have to start my life of independence. That was the plan—to experience new things, to be a new person.

Three hours later and the better half of my closet is packed in a suitcase with Jessi judging me from the couch, which is also covered in various hangers and unpacked clothes. Her legs and arms are crossed—the vision of a woman not happy with me one bit.

“You can’t just leave ,” she says. “Noah’s wedding is?—”

“I don’t care about Noah’s wedding,” I snap, throwing another camisole into the bag.

“Okay,” Jessi says slowly, her eyes narrowing. “Well what about your job?”

“People leave without putting in their two weeks’ notice all the time.”

Jessi laughs. “Yeah, and then you can’t use them as a reference ever again.”

“Whatever.”

She shakes her head. “You’re not thinking this through. You’re just acting on impulse like you always do.”

“I’m being independent and doing what I want,” I say, stopping in the middle of the apartment, accidentally swinging a shirt in the air as I try to—haphazardly—make my point. “Why is that so hard to grasp?”

She pauses then asks, “So what about Harry?”

My stomach flips, tumbles, and falls down the flight of stairs in my body.

“He’s fine without me,” I mutter. I wish I had said that with more strength or conviction, but that just isn’t in the cards apparently.

Jessi laughs, but it isn’t from happiness. It’s in disbelief. “Okay, what happened?”

“Nothing happened,” I say. “My van is ready so I’m leaving. That’s the end of it.”

“No, it’s not. You’re doing your whole fight-or-flight thing.”

I zip up my suitcase and place it next to the two other suitcases near the door.

“What are you talking about?” I ask, exasperated as I plop down on the opposite end of the couch across from her.

“In eighth grade when I made cheer squad and you didn’t, you impulsively tried out for football.”

“I was the best benchwarmer and a martyr.”

“Five years ago,” she continues, ignoring my comment, “Noah leaves town and you no longer want to go to vet school and you buy a bird.”

“Buy a bird,” Mercury echoes.

“Fantastic purchase, if you ask me,” I say.

Jessi sighs, moving forward with her longwinded point. “Noah comes back in town, so you buy a van. Now suddenly you’re leaving with no cause? You were going to make a plan this time, and now you’re not so that means something happened. Something always happens that results in you pulling some crazy-pants bullshit.”

“This isn’t crazy-pants.” A bright light shines for a split second outside my window. Lightning. “I bought a van to live in,” I say defiantly. “Now I’m living in it.”

Thunder booms and we both jump.

“And you’re gonna start your adventure on a stormy day?” she says with wide eyes and dancing hands waving around once more. “Come on, that’s just bad luck.”

I shrug. “At least it isn’t snow.”

“Well now you’re just jinxing yourself,” Jessi says, crossing her arms again.

“I’m starting tomorrow. I have a subletter dropping by in the morning. I gotta hand in my keys at work.”

“Wow, so responsible ,” she says, dripping with sarcasm.

“I’ll be back,” I say. “I just…don’t know when. Who knows? Maybe I’ll get lost in the Midwest and fall in love with the prairies.”

“Okay, Laura Ingalls Wilder. Didn’t one of the sisters die in those books?”

“Too many things happened. I don’t know.”

Jessi’s mouth twists to the side. I can tell she’s trying to put on a hard face, but those puppy eyes don’t deceive me.

“Let it out, Jess,” I say with a smile.

“I think something happened with Harry.”

I can’t meet her eyes. That’ll give me away in an instant.

“What? Did you say you love him or something?” she says with a laugh.

A silent peep of “No” comes out of me. It feels like a lie even though it’s not. Those words were never uttered to him, but did I say them in another way? That’s stupid. Ridiculous. But just because something is stupid doesn’t mean it isn’t true.

The way we moved against each other…how he felt…how we felt together…

“It’s not worth talking about,” I say. “We just got in a fight or something. I don’t know. I need to get out of here.”

“You didn’t get in a fight,” she accuses with her eyes narrowed.

“It didn’t work out. Maybe in some other life it could have, but it just didn’t. Drop it.”

“Fine. Fine.” She smirks, sliding farther down the couch until her feet push underneath my bottom. “Is it awkward because you did the dirty?”

“Ew, stop it!” I squeal, digging my own toes underneath her legs. She squirms out of the way before I can shimmy my foot farther.

“Dang, it’s just not gonna be the same around here without you,” Jessi says through a whine, her head falling back against the cushions.

“Maybe you and Heather can finally get close,” I say. “Or, I don’t know, Charlotte seems kinda cool.”

Jessi lifts an eyebrow. “Vanna, you mean?”

I shrug. “I don’t think she’s half bad.”

Her eyes narrow and her lips purse—the signs of a very suspicious best friend.

“What’s gotten into you?” she asks. “Liking your ex’s future wife? Noah’s future wife? I thought she’d be your sworn enemy for the rest of your days.”

“Do you think I’m that shallow?”

“I think you love him that much,” she says, and then hesitates before clarifying, “Loved, maybe?”

Love. What even is that word anymore? After last night, it feels like any idea I had of that strong feeling are so dull and wrong. So corrupt. My feelings for Noah can’t possibly be love because when we had sex, it was sex. Were we making love? Were Harry and I—no, that’s a thought I can’t afford to have.

“I don’t know,” I muse. “Maybe I don’t like Charlotte, but…she’s got her own demons to work out, I think.”

“Not even one more week?” she asks.

“What’s keeping me here?”

“Me,” she says in a split second. “And Harry, if you really want to get deeper, but apparently you don’t.”

I choke out a laugh followed by her loud groan echoing through the apartment that bears no decorations and no sign of a future. Just boxes and suitcases.

“Ugh, this sucks,” she bemoans. “I mean, enjoy your life and all, but…damn. This sucks.”

“Sorry,” I say, twisting my lips to the side and reaching out to hold her hand.

“Nah, don’t be,” she says, taking it. “Go find the great unknown or some wonderful bullshit.”

“Thanks.”

“Yeah, whatever.”

We exchange smiles, and the cliff in my stomach gains that much steeper of a fall.