More Than Enough (More Than Series, Book 5) (31 page)

“I don’t know. I hate lying to her about where we are.”

“Why would you lie?” I ask.

Her eyes widen. “I didn’t mean to offend, Riley. I’m sorry. It’s just… it’s…”

“Awkward,” Lucy chimes in. “It’s nothing against you. I think we make it more awkward than it is.”

“Wait.” I rear back in surprise. “You guys don’t feel like you have to choose or keep secrets because of us, do you? I mean, if it came down to it, she was your friend first. I’m not going to get in the way of that. Besides, we’ve been in the same room together before—”

“Yeah, but Dylan has always been there so…” Amanda’s words die in the air.

“This isn’t middle school. We’re adults,” I tell them. The phone stops ringing, and then starts again a second later. I pick it up and hand it to Micky. “Tell her to come over.”

“What?!”

“Yeah. I can be nice.”

“It’s not you we’re worried about,” Amanda says.

“You don’t think I could take Heidi?” I roll my eyes. “Please.”

“Who would win in a fight?” Lucy asks, lost in thought.

“Amanda,” Micky answers.

“She’s not fighting,” I tell her. “Tell her to come over and that I want to fight her. I’ll set up a ring in the back yard. We can settle this right now.”

“Really?” Lucy says, her eyes wide as she sits up higher. “Fuck yes!” She’s excited. Way too excited.

Amanda laughs.

“I was kidding, Luce. Calm down,” I tell her.

“You really want me to tell her to come over?” Micky asks, her thumb hovering over her phone.

“Yes.”

“Okay. It’s your funeral.” She answers the call and brings the phone to her ear. “Hey.” Pause. “Yeah, we’re at Riley and Dylan’s.” A longer pause. “Book club. But Riley said you’re welcome to come over.” An even longer pause. Micky’s eyes shift to me. “She wants to fight you.”

My jaw drops.

Micky laughs. “I’m kidding. We’re just sitting around now. Amanda killed the book for everyone.” The longest pause in the history of the world. “Sure. I’ll text you the address.” She hangs up and drops the phone to her lap. “She’ll be here in fifteen. She’s bringing gloves.”

“Gloves?” I ask.

“Boxing gloves.”

“Fuck yes!” Lucy shouts, now on her knees, her arms raised in victory.

Micky laughs. “I’m kidding, Luce.”

“Stop messing with my emotions!” Lucy yells.

Fifteen minutes later,
Heidi shows up, causing the most awkward half hug in the history of half hugs. She’s carrying a huge duffle bag and holding a plate of brownies. “What’s in the bag?” I ask her, hoping to God she didn’t plan on staying the night. “Just cosmetic stuff.” She shrugs. “I know this is your night—the whole book club thing… it’s just that I don’t really read so…”

I return her shrug. “Cool.”

She nods. “Cool.”

“Hey,” Lucy whispers, her eyes already half hooded from the booze. “Are you guys going to fight? Because I need to make room on my phone to record it. And if you do could you do it in your underwear? Cameron and I would really appreciate it.”

Ten minutes later
and a now empty plate of brownies, we’re all lying on the floor. I’m light headed, and the room is spinning, and Lucy is loud. So damn loud.

“I could eat an entire truck of faces,” she says.

“Me too,” Amanda says.

Micky adds, “Did you guys watch that thing on the thing about the lady who eats her hair?”

“But did she die?” Heidi asks.

Lucy says, “My hair smells like the morning dew on a holy sunset and praying elephants.”

I sit up quickly, gasping, and looking at Heidi. “Where did you get those brownies?” I ask.

She sits up too, a lot slower than I did. “They were in my fridge. They weren’t that good. My mom sucks at baking.”

“Heidi.” I shuffle on my knees until I’m in front of her. Reaching out, I shake her shoulders, hating that her hair stays as perfect as her face while I do it. “Is there weed in those brownies?”

She slaps my hand away, scowling at me. “Why the hell would there be weed? It’s just my parents at home. Why would they have weed brownies? Why is it called weed? And what is
brown
?”

Amanda chuckles. “Heidi’s parents are stoners.”

“Shut up,” Heidi retorts, her face paling as realization sets in.

Mikayla gasps. “We’re stoners!”

Heidi clicks her tongue. “You’re all full of shit,” she says, swaying on her feet when she stands up. She walks over to her gigantic bag. “Let me do your face now.”

“With your vagina?” Lucy asks.

“Luce!” Heidi squeals.

Lucy sighs. “I have such strange lesbian tendencies. I apologize.”

We all giggle
like schoolgirls, watching Heidi attempt to apply make up on Mikayla’s face.

“You look like a clown!” Amanda shouts. She’s louder than Lucy.

“A sexy clown,” I add, seeing Micky’s frown.

“You look like a fucking whore!” Lucy yells.

Micky gasps. “Fuck off. I’d rather be a lesbian with Roxy than with you!”

Lucy’s gasp matches Micky’s. “That was a low blow.”

Micky’s gaze drops, her frown back in place. “It was. I’m sorry.”

“Who’s Roxy?” I ask, fisting a bunch of compacts in Heidi’s bag. I pull them out and drop them on my lap. Then I open one—blue eye shadow. I smear it across my lips and find a brush to apply what I think is blush across my entire face. Because my mind tells me to. And the brush feels so damn good against my skin.

Lucy says, “Roxy is a fucking cunt of a whore and we shall never speak her name again.”

“Yeah, Riley,” Amanda spits. “Her name is Dylan.”

“I thought her name was Roxy,” I mumble using a tube of mascara to paint my nails.

Heidi turns to me. “What are you doing?”

“What are
you
doing?”

Amanda giggles.

Out of nowhere, Lucy says, “Hey. Is Dylan a moaner?”

I throw a brush at her face. “What?”

“A moaner,” she says, ignoring the brush. “In bed, I mean. Like… does he moan?”

“I bet he’s just silent,” Kayla says.

“He’s not a moaner,” I snap.

And they all shut their mouths and looks down at their hands.

I add, “He’s more of a grunter.”

Lucy tries to stifle her laugh.

“And a talker.”

“Dylan talks?” Amanda shouts.

“Yeah, he says dirty, filthy shit in my ear right before I come.”

“So hot,” Lucy mumbles.

“Dylan talks?” Amanda shouts again.

Micky laughs.

“He never did that with me,” Heidi murmurs.

Lucy scoffs. “As if you’d be into that anyway.”

Heidi shrugs. “True.”

I nudge Heidi’s elbow. “You missed out, Heids.”

“I bet you’re missing the D,” Micky says.

“I miss him a lot,” I admit.

Lucy laughs. “Not D, as in Dylan. She means The D. As in The Dick.”

My eyes widen. “Oh.” Then I shrug. “Not as much as I miss him.”

“It must be hard,” Lucy says, a seriousness taking over. “Cam and I spent a few weeks apart and it was hell.”

“I had a year away from Logan,” Amanda chimes in.

“A few days, max, for me and Jake,” Kayla says.

Heidi asks, “What do you miss the most?”

For a moment, I wonder why she’s asking… if it’s because she’s trying to compare us to see who missed him more. She must realize what I’m thinking because she adds, “I just thought you might like to talk about him. Lucy’s right. It must be so hard.” She smiles, warm and gentle. And I know right away there isn’t a single ounce of malice in her words.

She’s trying to cross a bridge, and I choose to meet her in the middle.

I suck in a breath and let it out in a
whoosh
as I lie back down. The others follow.

“I miss everything about him. I miss the way he touches me, the way he smells, the sound of his voice—”

“Dylan talks?!” Amanda yells again, and I laugh.

“He talks a lot,” I tell her. “And he’s funny. So funny.”

“Dylan’s funny?!” she shouts.

We laugh as one, mine ending sooner than the others. I’d done everything I could to ignore how much I’ve been missing him lately but the days are just as hard as the nights now and I’ve tried not to think about what he’s doing and where he is and if he’s safe. I try not to get angry when I think about how hard it is for him to call, just once, just so I can hear his voice and tell him I love him. I tell the girls all this without realizing it, but they never interrupt, never ask questions.

I wipe my eyes, the pain of longing unbearable. I release another round of tears. Another sob. I’m not the only one crying now, but we do it quietly. Together but apart. “I’m so grateful that he gave me you guys, too, because I don’t know that I’d be able to get through all this without you and the boys and I appreciate you all so much and I’m sorry if I’ve never told you that.”

Next to me, Kayla lifts her head. She smiles but she doesn’t speak.

I add, “I think, what I miss most, is the way he makes me feel. I don’t think he even realizes how important he is in my life. He was my strength when I had none and sometimes I find myself getting lost and I have to dig deep to find my way back. The only way I can do that is because he’s shown me that I can. He has this way of making me smile, making me happy. He makes me laugh when I feel like I can’t. But the best part is that when I believed it to be impossible, he made me love again.”

Kayla takes my hand, holding it between us as we lay on our backs, looking up at the ceiling. “He’ll come back to you, Riley. He loves you so much.”

“He
made
you a car,” Lucy says.

“And gave you his home,” Amanda chimes in.

On the other side of me Heidi sighs. “But Riley knows. Right, Riley?”

“Knows what?” I ask, rolling my head to face her.

“That it’s not about him giving you a car or a house. Those are just material things—things Dylan doesn’t care about. That was just his way of showing it.”

“Showing what?” I whisper.

Her eyes lock on mine. “That he loves you and that he’s creating a future with you, Riley. One that he plans on lasting forever.”

Riley

I
wake to
Sydney in my bed. She wasn’t there last night.

She’s smiling,
creepily
. Real creepily.

Honestly, it wasn’t really a surprise to find her here. Eric had a key to the house and she did tell me she had plans for a belated birthday celebration.

She takes me clothes shopping, which is odd because it’s rare you’d find me outside of work in anything other than Dylan’s shirts.

It’s lunchtime by the time we get back. I park in the garage like I do every other time, but when I open the door to the yard and the shout of “Surprise!” fills my ears, I kind of just stand there, shocked. Everyone’s here; Mom, Mal, Eric, a few people from work and the rest of the gang.

“What—why?”

“Dylan,” Mal states.

And they all lower their heads for a moment of silence. Until Lucy laughs. “I couldn’t hold it in,” she says. Then claps at everyone’s skilled synchronization.

Sydney smacks my ass. “Go get changed into your new clothes,” she orders, and suddenly it all makes sense.

“Have you heard
from him?” Sydney asks, patting her stomach.

I lean back in my chair, my belly full from all the food Mal prepared on the grill. “I’m sure he would’ve contacted me if it were possible.”

She grins. “Oh, I’m sure. He’d hate to be missing out on your twenty-first birthday.”

“And our one-year anniversary,” I tell her, my smile wider than hers.

“Oh yeah?”

“I mean, technically, probably not. But it was the beginning of it all.”

Lucy approaches, phone to her ear. She hangs up when she gets to me. “That was Cameron. He wanted to apologize. He got held up at work but he’s on his way.”

There’s that awkward
moment at every party when everyone circles the cake while they sing Happy Birthday, all eyes on you, and you kind of just sit there waiting for the song to be over and the focus to switch to anything else so you’re no longer embarrassed.

The first song seems to go on forever.

Then mom states that she hadn’t recorded it properly and we need to do it again. So everyone laughs and they repeat the song, a little less enthused than the first time. When it’s over we all look at mom, making sure she’s not so Dylan with technology and when she gives a thumbs up and says, “Make your wish, Riley,” I lower my gaze and take a calming breath.

I wonder for a second if I should blow out the candles individually. Would twenty-one wishes for Dylan have the same effect as one big one?

I lean down, feeling the warmth of the candles against my cheek. Then I close my eyes, suck in a breath, and I think about the boy I love. The boy I miss more than anything. My lips part—his name on repeat in my head. Then I make my wish, and I blow.

“Happy Birthday, baby.”

My eyes snap open. There’s a figure to my right—one I swore wasn’t there a minute ago but I’m too afraid to look because as much as I believe in wishes, they don’t happen this fast.

I struggle to swallow as I look up at everyone watching me, their eyes on mine, their smiles in place.

Nothing has changed.

It’s in my head. It’s gotta be.

I close my eyes again, letting the disappointment set in.

“What did you wish for, babe?” Same voice. Only louder.

I open my eyes and look for Jake. “Jake,” I whisper, my body shaking. I’m too afraid to turn to the imaginary sound. To the imaginary Dylan. Tears fight their way out of me. As do the butterflies. “Jake,” I say again. “I can hear him.”

Next to him, Mikayla’s crying. Jake doesn’t seem to hear me though. Or at least he pretends like he doesn’t because he won’t respond. I stand quickly and march over to him, still refusing to let my hopes control my senses. I stand in front of Jake, my eyes locked on his. “Jake. Is he real?”

Jake nods. “Yes, Riley. He’s real.”

I push on his chest because I’m angry he’s saying such a thing, even in my dreams. Because I’m sure that’s what this is. A dream. A big, fat, stupid, heartbreaking dream. “Don’t lie to me, Jake. Is. He. Real?”