The Stages of Loving You

01.

All because of a boy.

All because Evie's best friend was one of those:

A hopeless romantic.

"Cora," Evie starts.

Cora pulled off the oven gloves, relieving her beautiful, dark brown skin and pushed her hair behind her ear, before inspecting her tray of cookies. The smell wafted around the young girl's kitchen. Of chocolate, cookie dough, and broken hearts.

For a second, Evie pauses, torn between wanting to seal one of her friend's many delicious bakes, or just give her the same old, same reply. There's plenty more fish in the sea. And the boy who broke her heart - Dallas Sinner.

Wordlessly, Evie knows this not the talk her best friend needs. She needs a pick-me-up. Something to draw her away from the crushing blow of Dallas' mean betrayal. The betrayal leaves Evie to pick up the crumbles of Cora's heart.

No, if anyone was a sad, squished, unloved, and bitter cookie, it was Dallas Sinner.

He was the captain of the baseball team in the state of Olkalhuma home team. A pure knockout. Tall, tan, and a total  airhead. However Evie tolerated him because he made her best friend happy. Happy as when she was baking cookies on her home ranch or grooming her horses in the stables.

Evie recalls both Cora's parents let her date the upcoming player, hoping he'd stick by her and give her a better life. One far away, maybe in the show-town lights of Hollywood stardom.

They didn't yet know the star play was fond of breaking girls hearts and dreams, too.

Leaving her for dust by moving to Califorina.

"Evie," Cora starts. Her voice was barely a whisper.

"Yeah,"

"I don't know what to do?" she cries. "Dal, he's just left me behind, and I don't know what to do without him. How do I live?"

Evie, with her quiet reserve, didn't know what to do either. Evie feels like she is tiptoeing around a timebomb - Cora, and Cora's feelings - and does not want to tip it into the explosive stage.

"Cora," Evie was choosing her words carefully. "You lived without him before."

"But he was different."

Was he?

"No, he really was," she carries on, placing her hands over her heart, and crumbling her floral dress in her fingers. Evie almost feels her pain, inching away at her soul too. " He was kind, sweet, and had this way with words that just left me thinking I was the only girl for him in his world. I was the one. Like when I was with him, he would be my sunlight, and yall, know I love the sun. He was the sun, My sunlight, and now he's gone, I can't even bake these cookies without wanting to cry over them or throw them away because every single cookie I've baked this far reminds me of him."

Evie is surprised.

The shy brunette knows much of Cora's secrets, although she didn't know how far Cora's feelings had gotten. To the point of no return.

Then her friend, broken from staying up so late, and off lifting her heart to Evie, starts to cry. Horrible, big, fat tears stream down her cheeks, and Evie then pushes them away with the pads of her thumbs, and pulls her into a hug that sends Cora face over Evie's shoulder. The two girl's stay like that for ages, either pulling away, until Cora is all cried out and Dallas Sinner name is a sad cookie.

It took longer than expected, and although Evie was never one for hugs, Cora was the expectation

. Hugs from Cora, sad or happy, somehow pulls Evie out of her own sadness, and together, they cling to each other, bearing the weight of their struggles on each other's shoulders.