"When she does it, I swear it makes me want to cry." Victoria whined.

"Cry?" June snorted. "I swear it makes me want to grab her tablet and smash it against the wall."

They thought she couldn't hear them going on and on about how frustrating she was being, but Eva did perfectly. Easy for them to say. After all, they weren't the ones whose love had left and hadn't even bothered to contact them.

After Lucas had told her over the phone that Adam had left LA, she'd assumed that he'd gone to his cabin in Jackson Hole since he'd once mentioned that he went there to find solace whenever his life got shitty.

She'd been woefully wrong. After sitting in the hammock on his porch for about twelve hours with all her calls going straight to voicemail, Eva had finally left, booking a hotel to sleep in before taking the next flight to LA the next day.

Still, she'd told herself that Adam had been going through a lot, that he just needed some time to sort his emotions out and to grieve his father.
She'd give him that space.

But then hours had turned to days, days had turned to weeks, and the weeks had turned to months. Four months later, she still hadn't received a single text from him and his number had always been unreachable.

She knew he was healthy physically and travelling across countries. Because even though he hadn't posted anything on his YouTube channel, several videos of him pulling crazy extreme sports stunts had gone viral on the internet.

She wondered about his emotional and mental health. Was he as affected by this distance like she was? Or was he having the time of his life? His face in those videos were always unreadable.

Eva watched until the video of Adam ice skating in New Zealand came to an end, and before the next videos could follow from autoplay, she closed the app and plugged out the earpiece.

Tossing the tablet aside on her bed, she nearly flinched when she looked up to find Victoria towering above her and giving her a pointed albeit soft look.

Vicky took a seat beside her on her left. "Look bestie, I know I've been supporting you all this time, but hell, I think it's about time we both accept the reality; Adam is never coming back. He doesn't care about you. "

Eva shook her head frantically, unwilling to let go of her last boulder of hope. "No, Vicky. He cares. . . he just. . ."

"Still needs sometime to sort out his emotions?" June cut her off harshly. Her voice was of someone whose patience had reached the limit. "Fuck Eva, your father died when you were just six and yet you cried for like what? A month before starting to jump around again?"

She jammed a hand on her skirt-clad hip. "Adam is like thirty-two years old. And it's been four months. Even if he's grieving his father, that gives him no license to leave you hanging like this. No phone calls, no texts. A man in love would never do that."

"Adam never told me he loved me." Eva defended weakly.

"I swear that every time you make an excuse for him, all I want to is to grab a spatula and hit you so hard on the head that your brain starts working again." June growled.

"Even if he didn't say he loved you specifically, he must've said something along the lines of needing you. Obviously, it'd been a big lie. He doesn't give a fuck about you, Eva. I think it's time. you accept it. I'm tired of watching you always torturing yourself by watching those videos, knowing he's fine and yet confused by why he's not trying to contact you. He doesn't care. That's the only reason."

June was breathing hard by the time she was done. Over the last four months, she had never been so brutally honest about her opinion of why Adam was away without even bothering to get in touch with her.

Her words cut through Eva's already fragile denial, making reality crash on her with a suddenness that had her throat constricting. Her best friends were right.

Why would Adam hurt her like he'd done and then just walk out of her life without apologizing or even giving her any explanation?

Why wouldn't he have sent even a single text in four months? Why would he occasionally keep in touch with his brother and his friends and not think of talking to her?

The one time he'd called his brother when she'd been with him, why had he hanged up immediately she'd said hello?

It was about time she swallowed the bitter pill of truth, and the truth was that Adam had stopped caring about her, probably didn't even think about her anymore.

She had no urge to hold them back as the sobs racked through her entire body. Adam seemed to have already moved on. It was time she did the same.

Vicky and June wrapped their arms around her, holding her until she'd exhausted her tears and all that remained was a gaping chasm of hollowness inside her chest, a hollowness she feared would never be filled.

June brought a tissue from her handbag and dabbed at Eva's eyes, beaming afterwards. "Good. Now I never wanna see you cry over that asshole." She said firmly. Eva winced at the new label for Adam.

Her cell phone dinged with a notification just then. Grabbing it from beside her tablet, she unlocked it to a text message from a number she'd gotten quite acquainted with even though she hadn't even saved it.

Will you be accepting to go out with me anytime soon?

Another one came almost immediately.

PS: Remember that I'm not stopping until I get the answer I'm looking for.

Eva sighed. About a month ago, Vicky had had to go to a family function. Eva and June had offered to take care of the bakery for a day. This man in his late twenties named Xander had walked in in very plush clothes.

While in the very long queue, he kept complaining about how slow the services were around here and how busy his life was and how he knew bakeries which were far better than this place. When it'd finally gotten to his turn, he'd still been complaining.

Even though she'd known he was only trying to be annoying, fed up, Eva had given it to him right in front of all the customers, calling him an asshole for his arrogance and pompous nature, and had refused to sell him anything.

Since then, for a whole month, she'd had to endure his stalking, his showing up at unexpected places and times and his relentless pleas for her to go out on a date with him.

"From that sigh, I can already guess who that is." Vicky said.

Eva nodded. June glanced at Vicky, and they shared a conspirational look that made Eva narrow her eyes at them. "What are you guys thinking?"

"I'm sorry bestie, but you leave me no choice." June said.

Before Eva could decipher what she was talking about, her phone had been whipped out of her hand. She shot to her feet to get it back only for Victoria to block her path and hold her in place.

"June, I swear that if you do something stupid, I'm going to kill you!" Eva warned.

June handed her phone back to her just then. Eva looked done at it and was sure she blanched. "No June you didn't." She threw a glare at June over Vicky's shoulder. "'I'd love to go out with you?' Seriously?"

"Come on, it's not that bad." Vicky finally let go of Eva's arms. "Eva I think you should give Xander a chance. Who knows what might happen?"

Sighing, Eva slumped back onto her bed. How could she explain to her friends that she loved Adam in a way no man could ever make her love him?

But Adam doesn't care about you. He has moved on.

"So?" it was June who spoke.

Eva scanned her friends' faces, taking in the hope that shone so brightly, and she nodded. "Yes, I'll go out with him."

Even if she knew her feelings for Adam were far from dissipating, she couldn't keep on hanging on to the last and to a man who didn't give a shit about her anymore.

She was going to give Xander a chance. Like Vicky said, who knew what might happen next? Life was so full of curve balls.

About time, Adam.

≿━━━━༺❀༻━━━━≾

Adam turned off the steamy shower and stepped out of the shower cubicle, ready to set out to do what he'd become so good at in the past four months; doing extreme sports to get his mind off his shity life.

God knew knew his life had turned shittier after he'd left LA, away from the woman his heart still loved like crazy. The woman he thought had loved him just as much.

He hadn't seen her in four months. Four fucking months, and it was like forcing himself to live everyday.

After drying off, he stepped into his bedroom only to find his phone belling. He ignored it until it finished ringing, not in the mood to speak to anyone at the mement.

It started ringing again almost immediately, and Adam groaned before stalking over, and grabbing it.

"What?" He said gruffly into the phone after answering the call without looking at the ID.

Obviously used to his surly moods, his best friend spoke calmly. "Good morning to you too, Adam."

Adam huffed, not appreciating his cynicism, walking over to the closet and rummaging through for the day's wear. "What do you want, Lucas?"

"Adam, we've been wrong all this while." Lucas said with all hints of seriousness.

His heart skipped a beat. "What are you talking about?"

"It's about Eva." Lucas said.

Adam groaned in frustration. Why did the man always try to bring her name up the few times they talked over the phone? As if Adam didn't have to deal with having to think of her so frequently.

"That guy in the photo with Eva. He isn't her boyfriend. He's just a guy who's been courting her for months now. She barely gives him the time of the day."

"What?" Adam's head was reeling with disbelief at this new bit of information.

He'd left LA partly because he'd needed to deal with the messy emotions caused by his mother's sudden reappearance and then his father's death, but mostly because he'd been hurt and angry after seeing Eva with Brandon.

Her trust in him had been so fragile that a little misunderstanding and she'd gone running into another man's arms. The fear had set in immediately. What was the guarantee that she wouldn't do the same thing in the future anytime they had problems?

After leaving, he hadn't contacted any of his friends for about a month. Not even his brother, spending his days doing extreme sports and his nights wallowing in heartache.

Then he'd finally called Guille, and later Lucas. Raul had refused to speak to him when he'd once picked Adam's call. Lucas had pestered him for days about why he hadn't contacted Eva until Adam had finally told him about seeing her with Brandon.

Skeptical, Lucas had gone to do some investigation and then came back to tell him that Eva and Brandon weren't together. That perhaps, he'd misunderstood everything.

Just when Adam had begun to question the wisdom of his not having demanded an explanation from Eva before leaving, Lucas had called the next day to deliver a bomb; Eva was seeing someone now.

He'd accompanied the news with a text of a photo of Eva and a blonde guy, his lips pressing against her cheeks, so intimately close to her lips.

It'd shattered Adam; the fact that she'd moved on so quickly as if he'd never been indispensable to her. Lucas had reminded him that he was the one who'd been away for a month without bothering to contact Eva.

Infuriated, Adam had shot right back that a month was too short a time for her to have moved on after all the nights she'd professed how much she needed him. If she'd moved on, then he wasn't about to go begging.

After that he'd moved to Australia and practically cut ties with everyone until a month ago. Now Lucas was telling him that the reason why he'd been unsuccessfully trying for months to rip Eva out of his heart had never been valid?

"What the heck are you talking about, Lucas." He growled. "You and Raul..."

"Yes, yes, I know. June was the one who told him and so Raul believed it. He just found out that she'd lied, obviously hoping it would get to you and hurt you."

Silence lingered over the phone as Adam's breathing got shallower and shallower, courtesy of the invisible weight that was pressing so callously down his chest, squeezing his lungs.

God, he was such an idiot.

"What are you going to do?" Lucas finally asked after several minutes.

Dragging in a deep breath, Adam had no doubt about what he wanted to do. "I'm going to win her back, Lucas."

God, he hoped it wasn't too late.