“Not feeling well, huh?” the guy in a white lab coat at the pharmacy commented as he rung me up.
“Yeah. Must be a bug or something.”
He nodded. “It’s going around.”
I knew it!
His eyes pointed toward the glass window to the left of us. “Better bundle up. Flurries just started.”
It looked like someone had shaken a snow globe while I was inside. I paid and shoved the plastic bag inside my wool coat, before buttoning and pulling the collar up to cover my neck. Even though it was snowing, I wasn’t ready to go home yet. I’d been cooped up for a day and a half already, so I just started walking.
An hour later, my navy peacoat was almost fully white with a layer of snow. I found myself a few blocks away from where Riley had said she lived. I had no intention of dropping by, but I started to walk toward her apartment anyway. When I arrived across the street from her building, I realized I didn’t even know which apartment was hers. She could live on the first or twelfth floor for all I knew. I started to survey each of the windows to the individual apartments.
A few had Christmas lights around the window frame; one had a menorah. Some Scrooges had a whole lot of nothing going on and just kept their blinds closed. But one apartment on the left side of the third floor caught my attention. It looked like someone threw up Christmas all over it. There were blinking lights lining the edge of the window, a decorated tabletop Christmas tree was centered in the middle, and garland draped on the outside below the sill.
I smiled, certain it was her apartment for some reason. She’d bitched about her mother overdoing it, yet it would be just like her to find her own way to honor her father’s love of Christmas by doing the exact same thing. I’d bet she didn’t even realize she was doing it.
I stood across the street looking at that window for a while, enjoying the view and the possibility that she might be inside. Eventually, I shook my head, laughing quietly at myself. It was time to leave. I definitely didn’t want to have Riley look outside and see me. She’d think I was stalking her. Though that was, apparently, exactly what I was doing, I just didn’t want her to think that.
Yet I couldn’t bring myself to leave just yet. So instead, I walked to a coffee shop on the corner, a few buildings away from Riley’s. Shaking off as much snow as I could, I went inside and asked for the table next to the window. My fingers were probably starting to get frostbite anyway, so it made sense to warm up before beginning the long trip home. After all, I was already sick—I shouldn’t make it worse.
I ordered a cappuccino and settled into a chair that gave me a straight view of Riley’s building. I’ll just warm up and then get going. I really wasn’t stalking.
Yet an hour and a half and two more cappuccinos later, I was still staring at her building. Nothing much had happened either. My hands and face had warmed up, a few people had come and gone from her building, but no sign of Riley.
This is ridiculous.
I sighed and waved the waitress over to pay my bill. She deserved a decent tip, since I’d taken up her table for so long. So I plucked a few bills from my wallet and tossed them on the table, before standing to put my coat back on. I took one last look at Riley’s apartment building, and just as I did, the window I thought might be hers went dark.
I froze. Maybe she was going to bed early.
Or maybe that wasn’t even her damn apartment.
Or maybe she was going out…and moving on.
I waited a few minutes and nothing else happened, so I shrugged and decided to finally head home.
But as I opened the door to the coffee shop, I froze mid-step. Riley was coming out of her building.
And she wasn’t alone.
Riley
It had been three days since my date with Trevor, a nice enough guy who lived in my building. He’d asked me out several times this past year, and I’d always found an excuse to decline. But after venting my frustrations in that email to Ask Ida, I decided to take matters into my own hands and finally said yes.
We’d had a nice time, but I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t been thinking about Kennedy the entire time I was at Serendipity 3 with Trevor. And I hated knowing that, but there it was. Basically, Trevor was sweet and had everything going for him except one thing—he wasn’t Kennedy Riley.
I hadn’t heard back from Ask Ida and wasn’t sure I ever would. After my rude response to her previous advice, she was probably done with me. I was secretly hoping that Soraya would read my email and try to convince me contacting Kennedy was the right thing to do. But on my own, I simply didn’t have the courage to reach out to him. Why was I still hung up on a man who apparently wasn’t interested in being with me? If he was interested, he would have called by now, right?
The phone rang, snapping me out of my thoughts. Of course, my heart raced at the possibility that it might have been Kennedy.
I looked down at the screen. It was my mother.
The adrenaline rush subsided as I picked up. “Hey, Mom.”
“Hi, honey. Just checking in. Are you alright?”
Letting out a breath into the phone, I stared at the reflection of the Christmas lights in my window.
When I didn’t immediately respond, my mother sensed something was wrong. “Oh, no. Did something happen with Kennedy?”
Great.
I didn’t want to have to do this so soon—try to figure out how to explain Kennedy’s exit from my life. I just didn’t have it in me to mislead her anymore. So instead of concocting a lie, I decided to tell her the truth.
“Mom...I lied to you, and I’m very sorry,” I blurted.
“What? What are you talking about?”
“Kennedy wasn’t really my boyfriend.”
“What?! How is that possible? You two seemed so enamored with each other.”
“I know. Looks can be deceiving, can’t they?” I sighed. “I lied about the whole thing.”
“Why on Earth would you have lied about that?”
“Because I wanted to give you something new and exciting to be proud of when it came to me. Every year, in your Christmas letter, I’m the only child with nothing exciting to report. I was sick of feeling inadequate and figured if I could appear to be with someone worth writing home about...that you would finally be proud, even if it wasn’t real.”
My mother fell silent. Then she said, “I don’t even know what to say. I never imagined that my letters made you feel inadequate. That was never my intention.”
“I know. And actually...it doesn’t even bother me anymore. The whole thing seems silly now. I’m just letting you know my reasoning at that time.”
“So, if he’s not your boyfriend, then who is he?”
Good question.
“He’s a friend from work. Or rather, we work in different departments of the same company. He made up the whole thing about the space program. Well, actually, that wasn’t a total lie. He had applied in the past and gotten in. That’s how he knew so much about it. But currently, he works at Star Publishing along with me. But don’t blame him for lying. He was doing it as a favor to me. It was totally my fault.”
It was interesting that despite everything, I still wanted to protect him.
“Boy, you sure had me fooled.” Her next question surprised me. “So...why aren’t you actually with him? Aside from the fact that he lied for you, he still seems like he’d be a catch. You two had such amazing chemistry. You just can’t fake that, Riley.”