I blow out a breath, preparing myself. “You know how I told you Jamie was in town?”
“Yeah...”
My face pinches at my own disgust. “I wasn’t exactly… welcoming.” I tell Mia everything. From beginning to end. And I can tell the parts that hurt her, because truthfully, they hurt me too. By the time I’m done, there’s an ache in my chest so debilitating I can barely breathe, let alone speak. I open my hand, palm up, revealing the pendant I’ve carried since Jamie left. “She gave this back. It was kind of like a final farewell and fuck you at once.”
Mia takes the pendant from me, inspecting it with her brow bunched. “Someone should chop off your dick,” she says, her eyes going wide as she looks at me. “Sorry, that was reactionary.”
I shake my head. “Nah, you’re right.”
For the next few minutes, we sit in silence, neither of us knowing what to say. We’ve never really been in this situation before. I’m the fixer, and up until she reconnected with Benny’s dad, she’s always been the one needing repairing. Now things have switched and—
“Maybe I should reach out to her again.”
My eyes snap to hers. “What do you mean again?”
She scrunches her nose, gaze shifting to anywhere but me. “I kind of maybe went to see her at the diner that time I visited you for Thanksgiving…”
“What?” My eyes narrow. “What the hell did you say?”
“Nothing bad, obviously. She took your sorry ass back, didn’t she?”
“That’s not the point.”
“I’m going to reach out to her,” she says, taking her phone from her pocket.
“Mia! Don’t!”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m a grown-ass man. I don’t need my best friend going to—”
“What’s her last name?”
When I try to take the phone from her, she holds it up in the air as if I’m not an entire foot taller than her. “I’m serious, Mia. Leave it alone.”
“Maybe that’s your problem,” she states, lowering her arm. “All you do is leave it alone. You know what the definition is insanity is?”
I roll my eyes.
“Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. What are her socials?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, we need to find out who she is now, not who she was five years ago.”
“Why?”
“Why?” she repeats, as if I’m dumb for even asking. “So you can woo her all over again.” She smacks her palm to my forehead. “Idiot.”
I heave out a sigh, my shoulders hunched. “Her last name is Taylor. Jameson Taylor.”
We spend the next half hour trying to social-stalk a girl who, evidently, wants to remain unsearchable. It made sense back when we were together and she was afraid of Beaker, but he’s gone now.
“Maybe she follows you under a different name, and you just don’t know it,” Mia suggests. “Maybe she’s stalked you too.”
“Holy shit!” I exclaim, grabbing my phone. I open Instagram and find it’s still on the account she’d set up for me. There’s only one follower on the account, and it’s just a bunch of numbers and letters. I tap into it, and the first image I’m drawn to is a close-up of Jamie’s face. Behind her is the RV, and in front of it is a hammock chair beneath twinkling lights.
“Gosh, she’s prettier than I remember.”
I tap into the picture. “Yeah, she’s beautiful.”
“Beautiful?” Mia asks, rearing back in surprise. “What? Not hot? Sexy? F-f-f…” Her eyes pinch shut. The girl’s always hated cursing.
“Fuckable?” I say through a chuckle, nodding. “Yeah, she’s all those things.” I look back at my phone. “But mainly, she’s beautiful.”
“Awww,” Mia coos, ruffling my hair. “Little Holdy Woldy’s all growed up.”
“Fuck off,” I laugh, going through more pictures.
Mia scoots closer so she can see my phone. There aren’t a lot of pictures of Jamie’s face. They’re mainly shots of her RV and the places she’s traveled. “What’s that one?” Mia asks, pausing on a picture of an elderly couple standing side by side, smiling directly into the camera. I tap into it and read the caption. It’s the story of a couple she met in Idaho with grown children who have their own children. They spend their retirement traveling like Jamie does, moving from state to state, and visiting each of them. The man’s favorite childhood memory: eating ice cream in the rain while puddle-jumping barefoot.
I swipe across to the next slide—a brief clip of Jamie doing just that, her childish laughter loud and free. The sound alone detonates my heart, leaving splinters in its wake.
“Holden?” Mia whispers, and I try to steady my breath before looking at her. She reaches up, both hands on my face as her eyes search mine.
I sniff back my heartache. “I’m so fucking in love with her, Mia.”
“I can tell,” she says, nodding and lowering her hands. “We’re going to fix it, okay? Keep going.”
Mia gets on her phone, too, and we get an insight into the past few years of Jamie’s life in pictures and captions and three-second videos. And while Mia’s purpose might be intel, mine is filling in the missing puzzle pieces, each one repairing the holes in my heart.
“Holden…” Mia says, and I stop scrolling and look at her phone she’s holding up for me. “Look at this comment.”
I read it out loud. “So a friend sent me a link to your blog two days ago, and I’ve spent almost every waking minute wrapped up in your world. I feel like I’ve watched you grow from afar, and even though we’re strangers on the internet, I just thought you should know that I’m so incredibly proud of you.” I lift my gaze to Mia’s. “What blog?”
We go back to our phones, searching. “There’s no link in her bio,” Mia states, more to herself than me. She’s much better at this social-stalking thing than I am. “Wait. Her Insta name.” I look at the name: Dear Younger Me. “Let me do a search,” Mia murmurs. Then, only seconds later, she almost squeals, “Got it!”
It’s a standalone website with no pictures, just posts. I watch Mia go through at least a hundred entries until she finds the first, written almost three years ago, and starts reading it to me.
“Dear Younger Me. If I could go back in time, the first thing I would do is hug you.” Mia pauses, frowning as she checks in on me. She asks, “Do you want to be alone?”
“No.”
“Do you want me to keep going?”
“Yes.”
Mia nods, focusing on her phone again. “Dear Younger Me. If I could go back in time, the first thing I would do is hug you. I just want to hold you and tell you that it’s not your fault. Because there are going to be times when you question that. When the people around you are going to make you believe that. It is not your fault. You’re a child. The sweetest, most innocent form of existence, and you don’t deserve what happens to you. It is not your fault that you were forced to learn too young that evil exists in the world, and it’s not in the form of monsters or demons. Evil exists and stands on two legs, and no matter how much they try to blame you, it is not your fault…”