It’s the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done.
I settle at a desk as the phone lights up. I feel a flicker of nerves. After weeks of training, I’m finally flying solo as one of the hotline volunteers. “Hi, I’m Tegan,” I answer carefully. “What’s your name?”
The calls come all day, from strangers across the country who feel suicidal, alone, or just need to talk. It’s my job to listen and direct them to whatever resources they need: a hospital, a counselor, or just a local program for people who need support. At first, I took the job for distraction from Ryland, and from obsessively checking the website for the songwriting contest twenty times a day to see if the results were in. But after my first few sessions, it became more than that. After what happened with Connor, I realize how lucky I am: I had friends and family to help me through my darkest days, but not everyone is so fortunate. In a way, I feel like I’m making up for the pain I put my family through, using my recovery to help others just like me: people who just need someone to listen, and tell them that they’re not in this alone.
My shift runs until two, and then I help out in the office, stuffing envelopes for a fundraising campaign with another volunteer, Sophie. She’s studying for a master’s program in psychology, and this is part of her research. With the radio playing, we fall into a record-breaking rhythm of fold and stick. I can’t help my mind from drifting. I wonder where he is right now, what he’s doing.
If he’s thinking about me.
I know in my heart, he is, somehow. It may seem naive, clinging to memories when I haven’t had a single word or sign from him in a month now, but I feel a certainty, ringing like a melody through every atom in my body. Our connection is real, too real to just dissolve into nothing.
Because Ryland and I are two halves of the same heart now. We understand each other like nobody else. If you would have told me that the dangerously charming guy I met in Vegas one night would turn out to be my anchor in the world, my safe ground, the one to make me fly, I never would have believed you. But Ryland is more than I ever thought possible. Braver, stronger, sweeter, more true.
He knows what it’s like to struggle against the darkness. He understands everything I went through with Connor, the scars that make take a lifetime to heal. Everything I’ve done, everything I am, he accepts me. Treasures me.
Loves me.
Not like the love I knew with Connor: overwhelmed, and needy, and constantly wondering if I was good enough. But with a certainty that makes me feel I can fly.
When you find a man like that, you don’t give up on him without a fight. And I haven’t even gotten started fighting yet. Because the one thing I’ve learned this fall is that the future is up to me. I spent years feeling like it was all out of my control; following in Connor’s wake, struggling to make sense of his choices. To earn his love. Now, I know that I deserve so much more—but only if I make it happen.
I have a second chance at life, and I’m going to spend it loving him.
I don’t care how long it takes, I’m going to show him he deserves every good thing he’s ever shown me.
I’m going to love him the way I didn’t know I could be loved.
“Tegan?”
I look up. Sophie is staring at me with a wry smile on her face. “You’ve been folding that same flyer for five minutes now,” she remarks.
I look down. “Oh, sorry.” I blush.
“Thinking about someone?” Sophie arches an eyebrow. Her dark blonde hair is curling in loose waves, and she’s dressed in one of her usual vintage sundresses.
“Maybe,” I admit, cautious. We’ve spent a lot of time in the office together, but we’ve never really talked about our personal lives. “My boyfriend is…long-distance,” I reply at last.
It’s not a lie, I tell myself. We still belong to each other, no matter how far apart we are.
Sophie gives a sympathetic smile. “Tough, isn’t it?”
“Your boyfriend isn’t around either?”
“Kind of. He lives right here in LA,” she explains, “but he’s an intern over at Cedars Sinai Hospital. He works forty-eight hour shifts sometimes, so he might as well be living on the other side of the country.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, “that must be hard.”
“We make it work,” she smiles. “It’s only been a few months, but he’s a great guy. We just need to get through this phase, and everything will work out.”
“Exactly,” I agree, glad somebody understands. “It’s just temporary.”
The future will be different. It has to be.
After my shift, I head back to Blake’s house. He’s off at the movie studio, so I expect to find the place empty, but when I get out of the car I can hear music playing loud, half-way down the block.
Inside, Dex and the rest of his bandmates are sprawled out in the living room.
“What’s going on?” I yell to be heard.
“Sorry, didn’t think you’d be back yet,” Dex turns the music down a notch and comes to give me a hug. He’s been back from tour a couple of weeks now, staying in LA with Alicia to record the band’s new album. Then I guess they’re heading back to Beachwood Bay – except nobody will mention that town’s name around me now, as if the reminder of Ryland will send me over the edge.
“What do you think?” Dex asks. Everyone’s getting into the music: Dante, the drummer, is beating his hands on the coffee table, Austin nods along to the guitar. It’s a wild rhythm, pounding and infectious.