After the incident in high school, Cobie Evans has been avoiding the popular guys like the plague. It's until the day she sends a wrong email to her hot boss, Luke Williams, and shamefully reveals her secret crush on him. Granted, her next life agen...
"I know. I'm sorry. But I am not what she needs right now." He pauses a bit before adding, "And honestly, she's not what I need at the moment."
"I don't want to know the reason why you broke up with her. I honestly don't care. But I just want you to promise me to leave her alone after this."
"Okay."
"Promise me."
"I promise."
"And we can't be friends anymore, Harry."
It takes a few seconds for him to reply. "That's a shame. I'm always fond of you, Cobie."
"It would be too painful for Rose."
"I guess you have your point there. But then you also need to promise yourself, Cobie. You should stop persuading your sister to believe what you believe, to live up to your expectations, or to carry baggage that isn't hers."
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It's been five days and Rose is not yet home. After spending the weekend at her friend's place, she sneaked in to pack some more clothes on Sunday night and left the house again. The next morning, Cobie found her message stuck on the fridge's door, saying Aunt Martha would take her role to care for Mom while she wasn't around. She didn't answer Cobie's calls, didn't open her sister's back-to-back messages, and she didn't even respond to Harry's call. She only picked up their mom's call when Cobie wasn't around.
Cobie tries to convince her mom and herself that Rose is just needing some time alone to think. Her little sister did this in her childhood when their dad was being nasty to her. The difference is Rose ran to their treehouse and refused to go back to her room for the whole night. It was always Cobie who came to talk some sense to her sister and brought her back to her room. So, it's safe to say that it's her pattern when she deals with conflicts.
"I will go to her school tomorrow if she still doesn't want to go home tonight," says Cobie, eyeing her mother sticking a toothpick into the club sandwich she just made. "It's almost a week. She needs to go home."
"Maybe you should call Harry," her mom replies, sticking another panda toothpick into another sandwich. "I think he's the only one she will want to listen to right now."
"He can't reach her either."
"Oh. Are they fighting too?"
"They broke up, Mom," Cobie explains for the third time in the past five days.
"Oh, right." Her mom frowns while closing the lunch box and giving it to Cobie. "My poor baby. She must be very sad now."
"Yeah," she replies while eyeing her mom strolling across the kitchen to pick some fruit and yogurt from the fridge for her. Her jet-black hair is pulled up into a bun, showing her slender neck. The age has started to show its existence through the soft wrinkles on her face, but it never lessens the real beauty coming from deep within.
