Page 128 of Tell Me I'm Enough

“Hey,” he says, hands up. “I never said I wasn’t. I’m just glad to see a fellow fallen soldier by my side now.”

I shake my head as they walk out and turn back to this fucking science project I have to figure out on my own.

I pull my phone out and look at the recipe I saved earlier, trying to figure out where to start.

I’m mixing everything together in a bowl when I hear a soft, beautiful voice behind me.

“Mase…” she says, and I can hear the smile in it. “Are…are you baking?”

I turn around, a little embarrassed now, and nod. “Yeah…I thought…I don’t know. You always talk about how much you love your dad’s fresh chocolate chip cookies. I just thought…”

She walks closer to me, and I really wish she would stop where she is so I can continue to breathe normally.

“You thought they could cheer me up?”

I nod.

She puts her hands on the sides of my face, and all I can do is stare into her eyes.

“You know, I always wished for a sister growing up…but maybe I just needed a brother like you around. Maybe then I would have had the standards set for how men were supposed to treat me.”

Yeah…that hurt more than it should have.

I put my hands over hers and squeeze them. “Yeah,” I say softly with a smile, hating the way my heart feels. “You have it now, though.”

She smiles at me, and then gets a serious look on her face. “I’m sorry about the night of that party. I—I didn’t mean to try to use you like that, or make you uncomfortable, or—”

“Stop,” I tell her. “I told you that you didn’t need to apologize.”

“I don’t want to lose you as my friend, Mase.”

“You won’t.”

I pull her into a hug, and she rests her head against my chest.

“Let’s just pretend that night never happened,” she whispers.

“Okay,” I whisper back, even though I’ve thought about that night every day since it happened.

We end up making a bigger mess than I even knew was possible, and burn half of the cookies before we make it back up to my room, lying on the bed, watching How to Be Single.

“Fuck,” Simone laughs out.

I look over at her, confused. “What’s wrong?”

She shakes her head, still laughing. “This is my future.”

I start laughing with her. “Being single isn’t that bad…but Lani does totally give Rebel Wilson energy.”

She doubles over laughing. “Fuck…and I’m so about to be Dakota Johnson.”

Her laughing gets hysterical before turning into tears.

I’m stuck…confused on what to do here, then I slowly reach my hand out and rest it on her shoulder, trying to comfort her.

She shakes her head, the crying getting more intense. “I didn’t want this,” she says through the tears. “This isn’t how my life was supposed to go.”

I scoot closer and pull her in to me, wrapping my arms around her. “I know…I know.”