If This Was a Movie (Evergreen Park #2)

by Morgan Elizabeth

The world is chaos and full of disappointment and heartbreak. I like living in the fantasy of that, that two people could meet and go on some grand adventure and fall in love and ride off into the sunset.”

“Plus, if you think of every bad moment as a plot twist, everything seems less…consequential. Then you can be excited, waiting to find out what happens next instead of stressing about it.”

“I want…I want to be loved madly. I want to live a movie-worthy life and wake up knowing every single day it’s my reality. I want to find someone I wake up every morning excited to spend time with. I want someone who loves everything about me, even the parts I don’t like. Some people in my life…they think I’m being crazy, that I’m being unrealistic, and that’s fine. I know one day, I’ll find it, even if it takes a lifetime. I refuse…I refuse to settle for less than I deserve.”

“And Jules? There hasn’t been a single day in three hundred and thirty-two days when I haven’t thought of you. What you look like, how you made me feel, how you taste. I won’t fuck this up this time.”

“A few months ago, I replaced them. They’re not expired or anything.” Somehow, this shocks me even more. “You replaced them?” “I, uh…” He puts a hand on the back of his neck, holding it there and looking at the mug with a small pink handprint on it in front of me. “I figured I’d make sure they were fresh. Just in case.”

He’s kept the syrups I like for my coffee in his house for a year just in case I made my way back into his home. A year of remembering how I like my coffee after barely two nights together.

“Oh, and Jules?” He looks at me, and I don’t respond, but he still knows I’m listening somehow. “Unblock me, okay?”

“Anyone can be brave if they want it bad enough, Jules. You know what I say: Shoulders back, tits out, bitch. You were born for big things.”

“You were never just some chick I hooked up with, Jules, and you know that. You were always more. So much more, I didn’t understand it at the time. But then my daughter ran to you on a crowded street, as if she knew too, like she could feel the pull of you to us.”

I lied, I hung up the mistletoe. And it was so fucking worth it.