Lost King by Piper Lennox (best self help books to read .TXT) 📕

Juni sips her drink and stares at me over the rim. The group’s outburst, at some point, knocked the lamp over the booth; it’s still swinging, the shaft of watery green light bouncing between her face and mine.

“And,” she finishes, “it doesn’t sound like she intended to go through with it.”

“Based on what?”

“The way she felt about you.” She points at me, as though I’ve got a tableau of my short-lived relationship stitched into my clothes. “From what you’ve said, it sounds like she was developing real feelings for you.”

“Key phrase is ‘sounds like,’ honey,” Georgia scoffs. “That’s what liars do. They lie.”

They bicker back and forth a little, while Van, trapped in the middle, chugs his beer and stays out of it. I can’t decide who I actually agree with.

If Ruby was that good a liar, it means I fell for somebody who didn’t even partially fall for me, and that I’m a bigger idiot than I thought. It means I’m mourning something completely unreal.

And if she wasn’t...it means I’m giving up what might have been the most real thing I’ve ever had happen to me. Which would also make me an idiot.

I’m betting the answer lies somewhere in the middle, though, and that makes me feel so sad and pissed off, I finish my beer in thirty seconds flat.

It takes most of the meal, but the topic slowly shifts off me and onto their lives. I’m relieved. Nobody’s advice made me feel better.

Juni’s does stick with me, though. I’m not sure why. It’s not even advice. Just another viewpoint on the fucked-up mess that is my life.

When we’re all talked out—though I hit that wall way before we arrived—the group disbands with hugs and stumbling laughter. Clara decides to spend the night at her place tonight, in case I want “guy time,” and leaves with Rylan and Georgia, while the rest of us walk back in the biting cold.

“They’re calling for snow,” Wes says, breathing into his hands at a crosswalk. We don’t wait for the light, instead hauling ass as soon as there’s a reasonable gap in the traffic. “You should crash at my place another night. Leave in the morning.”

“Snow’s going to be even worse by then.” Going back to the Hamptons still sounds awful, but now the shimmering lights of the city are just as depressing.

“You could take my bed in the music room,” Van offers. “I’m sleeping at my place tonight.” He chuckles to himself, squeezing Juni’s gloved hand before yanking her into an embarrassing kiss. “Well: your place.”

“My mom’s place,” Juni corrects. They’re both right, technically. Van pays the rent, Juni’s mom lives there, and Juni occupies the only bedroom. It’s complicated.

That’s another reason staying in the city has lost all appeal: seeing my cousins with their girlfriends isn’t easy. Despite their own complicated beginnings, Wes and Clara made it work. So did Van and Juni. Watching them together is like seeing your entire platoon make it through the same obstacle course that just kicked your ass.

It starts making me think stupid shit. Like how, if they could get past the complications, maybe Ruby and I could, too.

New York isn’t good for me. It’s built right into the city: that naïve feeling that anything is possible. I need to get back to the Hamptons and that cold, ugly harbor. Someplace that looks how I feel.

Outside Wes’s building, we say goodbye. Van goes up with Juni into their building, shivering and calling through chattering teeth for me to drive safely. Wes, probably suffering hypothermia in nothing but a leather jacket, punches his fists into his pockets and leans on my Jeep.

“I’ll be fine.” I nod at the starless sky. “No snow in sight.”

“Not worried about that,” he snorts. “I’m worried about you sitting alone in that huge fucking house, getting wasted again, and doing something you’ll regret.”

“I’m not calling her.”

“Maybe you should.”

“Yeah, sure.” I laugh and climb into the driver’s seat. The heater pumps freezing air right into my face. I knock the vents off to the side, then roll down the passenger window so he can lean in. “You’ve been listening to Juni too much.”

“She didn’t say you should give Ruby another chance,” he says. “Just that her revenge shit kind of made sense.” He leans his chin in his hand, elbow perched on the ledge. “And technically, she didn’t even do it. She just started to.”

“And? You think she wouldn’t have followed through?”

“No idea. You know her better than I do.”

“That’s the whole fucking problem, man. I don’t.” My head hits the seat and brings back my headache from this morning. I almost welcome it. Physical pain numbs the rest. “She lied to me from the start. How do I know the rest wasn’t a lie?”

“How do you know it was?”

I stare out the windshield. Down the block, a bunch of shredded fast food wrappers get kicked up in the breeze, looking like snowflakes stained with piss. Kind of amazing how one city can be so inspiring and disgusting at the same time.

“I’ve never seen you like this.” He nods at me, I guess to encompass how much of a sleepless, dazed wreck I am. “You don’t owe her a phone call. You owe it to yourself to get some closure.”

I turn this idea over in my head, then tell him no way. Closure is another one of those naïvely optimistic ideas. Just because you deserve something, doesn’t mean you’ll get it.

Besides—what possible closure could I get? Nothing’s going to make me feel better short of a goddamn time machine. I’d