I slip my phone out of my pocket one last time: 6:17. I’ve been standing on this damn dock for more than twenty minutes. I never wait for anyone, ever, but I’m still standing here waiting for this girl and her smile and eating the exact words that I said to her yesterday: There’s a first for everything. Piper was right. I shouldn’t have been so smug leaving the yoga studio without her number. I shouldn’t have trusted that things would work out easily. ‘Always get a number,’ Piper scolded in a condescending voice. She has experience, both with condescending and making decisions that alter life courses. She didn’t leave Cash Rowland her number the day her father forced her to move to Madison when she was seventeen. Piper hasn’t seen him for over four years, even though they live only two hours away. She claims she’s leaving it up to the universe to see if they belong together. I think she’s full of shit and too scared to deal with the past that pulled them apart. Not that I have anything bold to say about shady pasts.
