Everywhere, Everything. ★ STURNIOLO TRIPLETS

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

That night, I slept soundly. No nightmares. No dreams. Only a deep, peaceful sleep. Honestly, it was weird. I can't remember the last time I slept through the night but I wasn't complaining.

By the time I woke up, the sun was high and bright, cutting through the blinds. At first, I felt light and rested. I even closed my eyes again and burrowed deeper into my blankets until I heard the click, click, click of the overhead fan and realized how quiet it was. No snoring. No incoherent grumbling. Not even the sound of birds chirping in a nearby tree.

I was totally and completely alone.

I yanked the covers over my head. With the boys, I relished the small moments when I was alone in the bathroom or awake before anyone else because it was quiet and calm, but now the silence was too much to bear. All I wanted was to hear them bickering with each other.

I pushed the blankets off and blinked up at the cross beams lining the ceiling. Last night I was so exhausted by the time I climbed into bed, I hadn't bothered opening the window and now it was stuffy in here. I crossed the room to the window that overlooked Briar Avenue and pushed it open. Cool, late morning air poured through the screen.

Before heading back to her place last night, Jenny told me not to come into the shop today.

"Take a day or two," she said, petting my hair.

I frowned. "Really, Jenny, I'm fine."

Okay, maybe fine wasn't exactly how I was feeling, but regardless, the last thing I wanted to do was spend the next couple of days moping and miserable over the Sturniolos like my mother after a breakup. It didn't matter if she'd only been seeing a guy for a week or a day - she would come completely unglued, going on and on in a fit of hysterics that he was "The One" and how she would never recover. It didn't matter how badly I was hurting right now, I would never let myself fall apart over a boy like that.

Jenny gave my elbow a pinch and I jumped. "You can try and convince yourself all you want that you're not upset about what happened, but you certainly won't convince me."

My frown deepened and I rubbed at the spot where her long nails clipped my skin. "Of course I'm upset," I said. "But..." I shrugged, "it was never going to end any other way, Jen."

Jenny gave me an incredulous look. She didn't believe that. From the jump, she thought the boys would be good for me. I guess we were both wrong.

She changed the subject. "A couple of days off will do you good anyways," she said. "Gives you time to finish that essay you've been working on. I doubt you got much done while you were away."

She had a point. I haven't written more than a paragraph in the last three days. Which probably didn't seem like a big deal to anyone else, but Black Ink's submission window closed in less than three weeks. Not only did I have to finish writing the essay, I had to make sure it was as tight and clean as possible or else submitting would just be a waste of time.

Jenny took my lack of response as confirmation. She gave my knee a quick pat. "Good, so it's settled."

Down below, on the sidewalk, a group of tweens handed out orange flyers for the Harvest Festival to passerbys. A middle-aged woman in a red and black flannel buttoned to be off-the-shoulder stopped for a flyer. She was holding a coffee from Last Cup, and my shoulders shrunk.

Normally, I'd camp out with a croissant and coffee at the cafe to write, but there was no way I'd be setting foot back in there any time soon. In fact, I'd be avoiding any and everything that reminded me of the Sturniolos for as long as humanly possible. That meant deleting all social media apps off my phone and putting it on Do Not Disturb for anyone except Jenny.