He Chose My Best Friend, Now He Wants Me Back Chapter 12

He Chose My Best Friend, Now He Wants Me Back Chapter 12

He spent the entire day in Bar Harbor.

The town wasn’t large, but after driving every street multiple times, he concluded that “Mara’s Books” was a ghost. It didn’t exist. He walked the block from the photo a dozen times. Every other shop was there, exactly as it appeared. But not the bookstore.

Maybe it had already closed.

The thought chilled him.

The next evening, he sat in a cafe overlooking the harbor, ready to give up. Seagulls circled overhead, their cries a monotonous mockery.

His phone buzzed. A text from Sloane.

“Did you find her?”

Ben stared at the screen, a wave of irritation and exhaustion washing over him. He typed back two words.

“No.”

He set the phone face down and stared out the window, his gaze empty.

Just then, a figure crossed the street, carrying a cardboard box half-full of books.

It was Mara.

He shot to his feet.

The chair tipped over with a jarring scrape of wood on wood, and every head in the cafe turned.

Ben didn’t care. He burst out of the door like a man possessed.

“Mara!”

His voice was a raw, desperate sound that tore through the quiet evening air.

The figure stopped and slowly turned.

The sunset gilded her face. She looked… well. She wore a simple white T-shirt and jeans, her hair pulled back in a loose knot. The shattered emptiness in her eyes was gone, replaced by a settled calm.

When she saw him, she didn’t even look surprised.

“How did you find this place?” she asked, her tone as mild as if she’d run into an old acquaintance.

Ben just stood there. The apologies, the pleas, the desperate lines he had rehearsed all died in his throat. He had imagined this reunion a thousand times, but never like this.

She looked too well. So well that his frantic pursuit felt like a clumsy, unwelcome intrusion.

“I… I was here on business,” he lied, his voice tight. “Just passing through.”

Mara looked at him, the corner of her mouth twitching in a barely perceptible smile.

“Ben, the flight from Chicago to Bar Harbor is over nine hundred miles.” She stated the fact calmly, each word dismantling his flimsy lie. “How, exactly, were you ‘passing through’?”

The ridiculous disguise dissolved.

Ben’s eyes reddened. He finally gave up, his voice shaking. “I wanted to see you. I just… I had to see you.”

Mara didn’t answer.

She didn’t get angry or demand an explanation. Her expression didn’t even flicker. She just held her box of books and looked at him.

Her calm was an impassable ocean, and it made him understand, with sickening clarity, that he was completely and irrevocably shut out of her world.