Deep breaths. You can do this Ellie.

My finger extended and trembled while my weight shifted from one foot to the other. A breath's distance from the doorbell, I drew back.

No, I can't. Abort -

"Ellie!" The door flew open with a bang. A pair of piercingly bright blue eyes greeted me at the door of my ex-boyfriend Logan's mom's house. Given why I was here, I was eternally grateful that those eyes belonged to his mom and not Logan.

"Hi Grace," I replied as a tight smile tugged at my lips.

"Logan is... not here right now." Those ocean blue eyes that reminded me too much of Logan immediately clouded. Her smile faded slightly as her gaze dropped to what was clasped between my hands. "He left for football camp two days ago, I got back last night from UC-Davis."

"Oh." Relief immediately flooded into me, since I'd dreaded seeing him in person again.

Three months had passed by since I'd last seen Logan and no part of me deserved to even breathe the same airspace as him after what I'd done. The horrified look in his eyes when I'd removed the promise ring he'd given me for Christmas and given it back to him served as a constant mental reminder of an obvious fact.

Since I was the bitch who broke up with her dream-perfect boyfriend.

"I-I just wanted to bring this by." My voice softened as a welt of emotions crept up the back of my throat and threatened to spill over into my words. A giant pit sat in my stomach with a discomfort level secondary only to the tightness that constricted my chest.

"Oh Ellie." She opened the door and stepped aside like I was still welcomed inside their home. My feet disagreed and I stayed rooted on their front porch.

Her kindness flowed effortlessly into her voice, "Please come inside, I insist."

"I think it's best I just drop these off and go." I extended my arms to her straight out like Frankenstein, which wasn't as far off with my haggard post-work appearance as I imagined. "Please give them to Logan."

"Okay..." She eyed the items I thrust in her direction suspiciously, then focused on a soft, gray lump of personal comfort. "But you keep the sweatshirt. I know for sure that was a gift."

"All right." I pulled the shirt off the top of the pile, secretly relieved since I'd come to love my 'Lit Happens' sweatshirt. "But you have to take his jacket back."

"I am sorry things came to this." Grace's eyes deepened to a slate blue color while her fingers clasped Logan's burgundy red and gray varsity football jacket. "I'm not even going to imagine -"

"It's okay," I interrupted as a fresh batch of tears threatened my falsely stoic exterior.

"You take care of yourself, Ellie." She reached out and hugged her arms around my shoulders. "You are always welcome here, no matter what my idiot son did. And know that I'll always be an Ellie's Kitchen follower even if I burn half the recipes."

When I paused, she flashed a sheepish smile. "Okay, most of them. I do try though."

"Th-thanks," I whispered huskily, then turned and stepped quickly back to my car. My chest heaved with deep, raspy breaths as I put more and more distance between us. Just like I'd expected, as the breathing space increased, my sense of closure didn't. All I felt was a hollowness, like I'd carved out and given up some part of myself that I wasn't ready to part with.

Twelve painful weeks had passed since Logan and I had last seen each other, touched, kissed, or even spoken. The first four weeks I felt starved and checked my phone practically every thirty seconds. Like I'd requested, Logan hadn't contacted me. Although, for once, I actually wished he hadn't listened.

My therapist Dr. Sterns had also suggested that I tackled my fractured relationships one at a time. Technically I skipped my parents and just decided that I needed time and the comforting space that only distance provided.

I forgave my brother Jake first, entirely for his displaced anger that he wasn't there when Ryder Stevens, the senior quarterback at Santa Cruz High School, sexually assaulted me our freshman year and years later Jake hospitalized Ryder in a payback fight. His anger issues and guilt that stemmed from concern for me were easier to forgive than his selfish dick-driven decisions when he secretly slept with my best friend.

The guy's getting anger management classes but really he needs 'zip it up manwhore one-oh-one.'

In a moment of absolute and horrible irony, my parents and Jake both decided Logan wasn't that bad of a guy after I broke up with him. My reasons that ended our relationship were purely selfish. I'd fallen too far into the darker, quiet parts of my mind and feared, like a leech, I slowly drained Logan in an unhealthy, one-sided relationship. The last thing I wanted was my depression turned our relationship toxic until we had the kind of fights where neither of us remembered why it'd started.

I still don't deserve Logan's forgiveness though.

The way I'd broken up with him, harsh, quick, then followed by complete silence was beyond cruel. Even now, I was haunted by my hypocrisy in how I hadn't forgiven Logan when he attempted to incriminate Ryder with evidence behind my back after I'd forgiven Jake's discretions and mostly forgiven Harper's.

But forgiving Logan meant that I forgave myself and I needed more time than we had before we'd have lived together. In a heartbreaking decision, I chose UW and cried for three days straight when he'd chosen the best school for him, UC-Davis.

I respected the fact that his decision was best for him because he had a real shot to be the Aggie's starting quarterback right away, which he deserved on talent alone, but also him being closer to Grace and Brody was best for them.

"It's for the best," I murmured again to my red-eyed reflection in the rearview mirror. "For him... both of us."

So why doesn't it feel that way?

My drive back home encompassed forty-five minutes of loathed self-pity. Every mile I drove further away from Grace's house, the memories of Logan resurfaced and lingered even though I hadn't stepped one foot inside and the hollow feelings inside my stomach hadn't dissipated as I'd hoped.

The months that I'd held onto Logan's coat were a pitiful reminder, a physical shred of what we were that I'd clung to. I wished that was a metaphorical thought but more than one night I'd wrapped his coat around me and let the remnants of his scent and my tears eventually dragged me into sleep.

Even though I'd broken up with him, the first six weeks afterwards, I was as fragile as an egg. One that had been cracked open and all my emotions oozed out. In response, I withdrew from anyone and everyone around me.

I'm still terrible at analogies, why do I even bother?

The subsequent weeks before I left early for college, my emotional state shifted into nonexistence. My body went through the motions of daily life but emotionally I was empty and numb like a discarded shell. Mentally, a thick fog had penetrated my brain, often people had to repeat themselves when talking to me. Certain moments triggered me and allowed some emotions to seep through, but they were never pleasant. Pains of guilt poked into me, sharply at first, then as more time past the pains dulled but never dissipated.

Graduation day was a particularly strange moment. My parents and Jake were excited but that day was just another one where I went through the motions, which included my co-Valedictorian speech that honestly sucked balls. I knew the speech was terrible, put no heart into its delivery, and the three people who actually listened just raised their eyebrows at me.

In a rare moment of empathy, Jake had grabbed my hand and walked across the stage with me. Ironically, I looked up and saw the excitement sparkled in his eyes, the only physical trait we shared in common. His wide grin pulled his entire face into an expression that, like many of Jake's outgoing personality characteristics, I was completely enviable of.

So, down to the last day of high school, I was jealous of my brother. And I'd needed nearly all of high school before I realized how jealous I had felt. The attention, the fawning, the favoritism from our parents, and the favors from, well, everyone had somehow permeated through my skin. All of these I had allowed to seep into my subconscious, where they festered a weed of jealousy in my core.

Well, the first step is admitting a problem.

I was also incredibly grateful that Jake headed to USC, six hours away from our home in Santa Cruz, which was also eight hundred miles south of my school the University of Washington. While I expected his notoriety grew once he played football, he redshirted his freshman year. That meant he wouldn't be starting quarterback so my freshman year would finally be a fresh, clean, anonymous slate.

Internally, I was terrified. UW was only a four-hour flight away but it was another world away from the world I'd only ever known. I was leaving behind pieces of my old world, like my parents and Harper and sand on the beaches that wormed into every crack on my body, that I wasn't ready for.

Except the sand part.

Harper planned to stay home in Santa Cruz. She wasn't entirely sure what she wanted to study so she'd enrolled in Cabrillo Community College for her general studies. After she found her academic interest, she planned to transfer to a larger state school. For once, Harper was the one person who had everything lined up and a plan set in place.

A few months ago, when I chose UW, I thought I'd known my plan too. I'd applied and been accepted into their Nutritional Science program but, along with my guilt, doubt in whether I'd made the right decision weighed heavily in my mind. Somehow that plan fit better with the dream that Logan and I were together. UW had even arranged to put us in married student housing so that Logan had less outside influences on his education and football.

We'd made that plan at the beginning of this year, which carried us through to February. I lived in ignorant bliss for five months while the loved one closest to me kept a horrible secret from me. Logan not only knew about Ryder but planned to incriminate him until my hot-headed brother punched Ryder into a lifeless pulp and created a shitstorm of potential legal drama that ended when our silence was bought in an NDA. Jake and Harper were last-minute, unplanned additions but went along with Logan and sheltered me away from the truth like a child that couldn't be trusted. My parents' overreacted, sheltered and restricted me like I was still the fourteen year old Ryder had sexually assaulted, and seven weeks of solitary confinement and legal drama uncertainty was too much for my emotional state.

Weeks and lots of sessions with Dr. Sterns later, I'd mostly forgiven Harper. Jake had sworn her to secrecy and she'd been honest with me about her secrets, yet she'd also had the most opportunities to come clean. Our relationship had been fractured for sure but I hoped time at least put band-aids over the wounds. Jake and I were also on shaky terms and the distance this summer caused by my work and his football preparations that increased this fall was actually a good thing. We, well, I needed breathing space.

Three months later, the only one I couldn't forgive yet was Logan. In an incredibly unfair move, I'd forgiven him for what had happened and why, but not how.

He should've known better that unsurfacing everything from my past was the last thing I'd wanted. What a clusterfuck.

By the end of our relationship, I knew I was unhealthy. He deserved to be with someone who wasn't so miserable, broken, and emotionally volatile. So rather than wait until my depression poisoned our relationship, I spared Logan's feelings and cut things off.

We'd even planned to live together. I wasn't healthy enough for that commitment.

Ultimately, my parents supported my choice of UW but now that Logan and I weren't together, they had some reservations that I went to school so far away by myself. I hoped those reservations died once we stepped on campus but realistically once my parents left then those reservations left with them.

Harper was unique and special though. Her unforgiving, abrasive tenacity that protected me during most of high school was something I knew I'd never find in another person. Modern technology existed, so we said we'd try to stay in touch at designated call times. She'd joked that the six hours' drive still wasn't enough distance between her and Jake, but now I knew better than to believe her when she said things like that.

I could've lived without walking on them half-naked with each other and been okay with that.

I took a deep breath once the view of our California mid-century style split ranch pulled into my light yellow Volkswagen Beetle's windshield's view and exhaled deeply while I parked my car. The open garage door and loud clanging sounds that exited from the garage only meant one inhabitant was in there.

"About time you got here," a gruff, familiar male voice called out as I walked up the driveway. "I want to check over your tiny ass car before I go."

"You don't really think you're going to finish that old jalopy in a week, do you?" My lips curled up at the junker project car poor Jake had worked on for eight months. "What did Dad say? Oh yeah, I'd be driving it senior year. Looks like that's my senior year of college."

"You make it sound like I haven't made any progress." Jake frowned and slid the wrench that sat in his hand into his back pocket. "I rebuilt the engine and carburetor, and replaced, well, just about everything. Don't get me started on the mouse nest over the winter, but now I'm working on the -"

"Maybe if you'd spent more time working and less time screwing girls against the hood," I reminded him with a scowl. "Then it'd be done."

"One time." His dark chocolate brown eyes, the same color as mine, rolled at my teasing. He wiped his hands off on a rag, sighed, and lifted an index finger. "One time, Ellie. I wish she wouldn't have been that honest with you."

"Once is bad enough." My arms crossed over my chest, then my eyes narrowed and mouth corners turned further down. "It's permanently burned into my mind, thanks for that. Of all girls, just had to be Harper, huh?"

"First time I was with the same girl the whole season," he confessed with a lopsided grin like that information was some kind of consolation prize.

In addition to the decreased shortage of girls who willingly lifted their skirts for my stupid brother, I normally relished the end of football season. Our senior year would've ended the same if my brother hadn't gotten himself into trouble this year.

And if our parents hadn't slowly choked the life out of me.

I threaded my index finger under the elastic hair tie on my wrist, then snapped it quickly. The slight sting into my skin cut those over processed thoughts from my head, a trick Dr. Sterns showed me. While the incident between Jake and Ryder was months ago, my thoughts sometimes refreshed it and replayed the subsequent events on a loop.

Perils of being in waiting mode for college to start, too much time for overthinking.

"Just promise me you'll try to use better judgment with girls at USC, okay?" My long, straight dark brown hair pitched over my shoulder when I cocked my head sideways.

"I know," he replied in a monotone, almost bored voice. "Mom's to the point of giving me daily lectures. I swear she's trying to turn me into a born-again virgin."

"Like that'll ever happen." I snorted loudly. "I bet you can't go a month without banging some random, desperate football groupie."

"I went eight weeks for Chloe." One of Jake's large hands raked through his dark hair at the memory of his one decent human of an ex-girlfriend. "Little good that did me."

"So I have four days to knock some sense into your thick skull." I stretched my 5ft2 height as far up as it went, reached up and patted the top of his 6ft4 head with my palm. "Without me and Harper around to verbally kick your ass, you'll need to grow some moral responsibility."

"Chill out, Ellie." His words teased but a sadness seeped into his voice's timber when he said them. I knew exactly how he felt since a lump swelled up in the back of my throat. In just a few days, my brother, my wonder twin, and I separated. Unlike Harper, I had no plans to keep up with Jake's daily interactions.

The weight of the conversation hung in the silent air between us. Jake's exit was earlier than me, a whole month prior to the start of school for USC's football training camp. The Trojans had a solid senior starting quarterback and Jake redshirted his freshman year but knowing him, he'd work just as hard for the practice squad. He'd trained hard over the summer and every inch of him twitched for camp to start.

Still, we'd shared a bathroom together for nearly eighteen years and the idea I lived with anyone else, despite their guaranteed improved hygiene habits, was completely foreign to me. For all his faults, particularly the anger issues he still worked through, my brain hadn't comprehended my life not under my brother's shadow.

"I'll miss you," the words escaped my lips in the form of a whisper. Tears pricked the corners of my eyes and his tall frame blurred from my view. I stepped over and wrapped my arms around his waist before our three-year old moniker slipped out. "Wonder twin."

"Me too Ellie." The weight of his chin dipped onto the top of my head and he whispered back, "Me too."