Homewrecker

70 - 𝓱𝓮𝓻𝓮

A/N: So, this is it. Normally, I am beyond thrilled to post this final chapter and move on, but the experience I've had with this book is so different than what I'm used to. This book was the first one I've finished since 2016, and I wasn't sure if I was a writer anymore. Then I had a conversation with my editor about an idea I had been toying with and she LOVED it, told me to write it. I finished it in less than a year, something I haven't done since, like, 2011? This book made me fall in love with writing again. OH, and this book is coming out MAY 18TH 2021!! Like, actually published, in case you missed that announcement. I've seen cover work, edits are happening, and I'm so excited! Also, relieved it won't be 2020. I don't trust this year. Anyway, back to the chapter and thanks for coming along for the ride.

"Natalie, if you don't hurry up, I'm leaving without you!"

"You can't. Mom will get mad," Danny informed me from the backseat, a toaster pastry that had not actually gone into the toaster in between his teeth while he buckled his seatbelt and held his phone in his opposite hand, the muffled audio from the YouTube video he was watching emitting from behind me.

I held the heel of my palm against the horn for about three seconds. "If she doesn't hurry up, I'm about to not care if she gets mad," I grumbled back to him, before rolling my eyes when she still didn't emerge through the front door, despite my honking and grabbing my phone out from the cupholder in the console beside me, noticing that I had a text notification from Andi that included the new pictures she had taken of her dorm room, even though we had been there literally just last week to help move her in, with Ryan, although she still hadn't admitted if they were together or not.  But I had a feeling.

But one of the pictures she went was of the succulent plant I brought her, perched on her white painted windowsill where I could glimpse the cobblestone buildings out of focus through the mesh. Beneath it, she sent a single text, without emojis like usual. Still not dead yet.

I still looking down at the picture, smiling despite myself and the frustration I was beginning to feel towards Natalie for potentially making us late for our first day of school, when I got another text notification but it wasn't from Andi this time, hours away at a university in Connecticut—not Yale she had to clarify every time she mentioned where she was studying—instead it was from Ethan, responding to the picture I had sent him of me in my school uniform.

I was standing in front of the wall-length mirror in my bedroom, even though Andi said it was still hers, with a disgruntled glare at my reflection, at the black skirt and tie David had to do for me under my white collar, my knit matching cardigan wrapped around my waist. I still had my cast, but I managed to convince my doctor—and more reluctantly, Amy—to let me start driving again.

The bandage around my hand was gone, replaced with wider band-aids on both sides, and Andi's leftover makeup helped conceal the scarring from both an ex-boy-thing and a tornado.

I love this. This is becoming my lockscreen.

It's so hot. Doesn't this school realize that it's AUGUST?

You're right. That is very hot.

I typed in a side-eyeing emoji, sending it before formulating another response. Are we on for tonight? Wait, do private schools do homework on the first day?

You can't hear it right now from three hours away, but I'm laughing right now.

Noooooo, I typed back, pouting for a moment before I realized that he couldn't see and that Danny, even from the backseat, definitely could.

But, yeah, we're on. In fact, while we're at it, I could tutor you in calculus.

I responded with a crying emoji, several of them.