trigger warning:
mentions of greif and death. readers proceed with care. x
THE STAGES OF LOVING SOMEONE can sometimes be a curse. It cuts you into the heart like an arrow flying through your chest. However, this arrow is not aimed by cupid, but someone else.
They are called hopeless romantics.
With time, they become ravenous for the free-falling romance that sweeps them away. May it either be by a softly spoken word from a movie, a timeless kiss under the stars, or meeting their beloved partner in a small town cafe while drinking bitter coffee, they hope for it.
No, crave it, this hopeless romance to whirlwind them to their true love. So much, their chest weighs heavy with the wait, with the romantic notions of wanting something so simple, effortless, little thing called love.
They wish for love so deeply on stars above them, the stars start to cry, weeping with starlight, and space dust before a few of them, perhaps constellations fall from the sky, and blind the person wishing for the simplest of feelings – love.
But the stars forget to mention something before they fall into a forest with a startled bang, that love cannot be wished for, but only received by one's self, in every day, for the rest of your life. Love is with you until the end of your life, and if you happen to meet someone to pour a little bit of your love into their heart, too, then this is where Evie Wilson believes love might just be real.
Real.
She muses the idea, letting it consume her. It sounds dazzling, but also, there's the other side of the coin.
Heartbreak. And she sees this for what it is with her best friend.
Cora Nelson.
A curse.
Who is a mess, after her breakup with her girlfriend of several months. It is so deeply rooted in her best friend, Evie thinks she may have to call a doctor. Or maybe this doctor is called baking. This is where Evie found herself at 3am, in the middle of town, at her best friend's bakery shop, handing her oven gloves so she could get out her tenth tray-baked chocolate chip cookies from the oven.
Yes, tenth. Cora never goes by half. Always full out. And Evie knows what this break has recuded her best friend to.
A sad, squished cookie.
Cora's doe, brown eyes, hide behind her unruly locks of black hair, filled with tears as she sniffles and lifts the tray out the fan oven. Even though her back was turned away from Evie, it didn't let her stop her from knowing how unfortunate Cora's feelings had turned to.
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.
Lewis, she thinks. Lewis would have known what to say in this moment, and rightly so, Evie might have found the courage to say them:
Hopeless romantics need the hope of love to continue. To feel safe, and live out their lives, almost in a bubble. Evie thought it was nonsense when she was younger. The motion of being a hopeless romantic out to find love.
But of course, her big brother was right.
Of course, the odds of a hopeless romantic falling for another was rare. Like gold, shimmering underneath mud - it was precious.
And Evie finally understood why her best friend was so, so sad.
The stages of falling in love can be a curse. But if you let go of the wrong person who treats you less than the mud under your shoe, it also can be your epiphany.
Ephinays lead to roads. Roads led to new adventures. Adventures lead to finding it. People, places, music, art and the shimmering gold:
A stranger with a look of enduring love in his eyes —that will one day become your everything.
This is what Evie told Cora, until her tears melted away on her cheeks, her nose stopped sniffling, and the cookies behind the girls on the trays cooled down, begging for an invite.
Cora was the first to pull away. "Thank you," she says.
"What for?" Evie asks.
"Baking with me," she says. "until three in the morning. I needed that. I needed this."
Evie nods, understanding what her best friend means. It was okay not to be okay. And crying was for all genders, boys or girls. And even though Cora's eyes are red, and puffy, Evie thought she didn't look the least bit ahamshed of it, either.
"Cookie?" Cora asks.
"You read my mind."
Evie was left thinking if she should take up her own advice, and cry. Cry until no tears swim inside her the rims of her eyes. Because this morning, after remembering to look at her phone, (she had twelve texts from her Mum, one alarmed voicemail from her Dad and one reminded that she forgot about,) a date which was approaching that she dreads.
Her big brother's birthday.
It was supposed to be a day of celebration, a fond affair with a cake (baked by Cora of course, if she knew), balloons, and the horses...getting moved into their new stables by Lewis himself (a birthday gift like nothing else).
Now it was an occasion of grief, as the year dawned. Evie realises this is her first year without her brother. And the first year to inform her of his untimely death.
I miss you, brother.
So, Evie offers to help Cora move the cookies, as a distraction from her untold sorrow.
Out of sight, out of mind.
However, when Evie starts to place her tray of bakes into food containers p, under the kitchen counter top, Cora squeals out a thick, heavy protest. "No, Evie Vivienne Wilson, you are not throwing away my baked goods. Step away from the cookies."
Evie smiles. This was her best friend. Cora, a spark in the night, never burning out. And still, will not, ever, let baked cookies go unnoticeable.
"You don't need these anymore. I thought you were just baking them, to you, know, as a coping strategy, for having your heart squished like a cookie," Cora's eyes narrow, but Evie does not stop talking, "but no, you should really give them to charity or the neighbours. Surely, someone around will scoff down your tray bakes? What about the Nelsons."
"My Pap, come to think of it, will," Cora muses. "But no, he will not be eating all of these. "
Evie eyes trail on the cookies. All ten trays of them, sitting on the work-top, letting off steam. Double chocolate chip, white chocolate chip, raisin and almond, and Evie's favourite: the classic: plain, good old, chocolate chip cookie with nothing else to bother it.
"Then what are we going to do with them? Feed them to the horses?"
Cora lit up after a moment of thought.
"The Faith brother's really love my bakes. I heard the youngest son, Jacob is quite the cookie fan, and a fan of yours," Cora winks, nudging Evie in the rib, and Evie chokes, on the cookie she stole moments ago, feeling her cheeks blossom bright pink.
The Faiths. The family was pleasant with a ranch neighbouring down the road to The Nelsons, Cora's family and were on good terms with one another. They were friendly, always there, in case of an emergency with any horses, and the Faith's son was from, what Cora states.
Eye candy.
Hot, dripping, mouthing, eye candy.
"I don't have a thing for redheads," Evie plays along. She brushes the crumbs from her shirt, and watches Cora place the various cookies in handmade baskets, woven.
It also appears to be a trap.
A trap involving The Faith boys to visit.
"You will, when you meet them for the first time. Daniel is ageing like fine wine," Cora says. "And Jacob is cute as a button. I can totally see you guys...rolling around in the hay some day!"
Evie blushes.
"Cora May Nelson!" she says. "I don't ever think of such things. And besides, I'm not the type to rolling around anyone's barn...without getting to know them first,"
Cora gives Evie a side eye roll. Evie dismisses it by giving her orange ribbon to tie the basket together, to seal it and make it look effortless and pretty.
"There, all done." Cora finishes. "Time to ring the Faith's."
Evie leans on the counter top as Cora vanishes towards the phone in the hallway, thinking the whole idea was a trap waiting to happen. Evie was never good at small talk, never good at meeting strangers, and never good at talking to boys. Although she was nearly reaching eighteen, Evie found the whole affair frightening.
Dating was for mature people without commitment or self-confidence issues. Evie was riddled with them. She always worries whether boys find her attractive, if her indifference pushes them away. Or if the boys she was genuinely interested in, might decide one day to get up and leave her...
Like her brother.
Evie was pale, a beauty mark on her face, gap between her front teeth (which she hates) and always, always could be found at either Cora's home, baking in her best friend's hour of need or with animals. Precisely horses.
That's why she was here. In Oaklhuma after immigrating from England. Her parents wanted a fresh start after the death of her older brother, who was like her twin. Lewis was always there. Tall, broad, strong, and...
he was gone. Sitting in his grave, back in England, far away from the Oklahoma heat, the horses on the ranch Evie's parents bought with money Lewis left behind in his will, and Evie hates the idea of him not living out his dream to become...a horse guy. One where horses move to his beck and call with a steady wave of his hand.
Lewis Wilson wanted to be a horse whisper.
Taming horses, surrounding himself with horses, and skidding away from horses when they went wild in paddocks .
That was Lewis' dream. A dream now held in the hands of Evie's parents (and she could understand why. Lewis was their only son, head of the family, until his death crushed them).
Crushed Evie, too.
The house they made a home was still fractured, too quiet, and not the same.
There was no sound of Queen's music coming from Lewis's bedroom, no family movies on Saturdays, no late-night pick ups for Evie with her friends (because Lewis was her taxi driver (and didn't mind), no jokes told around the dinning table or no cups of tea in the morning. There was just a void—a Lewis shaped hole in the Wilson's family that couldn't be repaired.
The mark Lewis left on Evie's parents remains.
Her mother withdraws into the stables, and refuses to bring Lewis up into any conversation. Evie's father retreats into his office, buying and selling stud horses, who she never sees, and the picture frames of Lewis on the wall begin to gather dust.
Evie's home was abandoned the day Lewis died. And Evie's sadness fell to the quiet sound, in-between the spaces of her grief-stricken home.
Which is why she preferred the noise, the humour of the Nelson's. Cora befriending her soon after she moved to this state was a miracle. Also bringing her floral dresses, hopeless romances, and bakes, after sometime, the Nelson's household was a sanitary to Evie.
Cora, however, didn't know Evie was battling the shadows of grief, and it is not something she wants to tell people. For, Evie's heart was locked in a sorrow only she could get out of. And nothing or no one could save her.
As she scrolled through the photos on her phone of Lewis posing with his pride and joy, Cannon, a wild, mustang horse, Evie's heart collected all the memories until waves of grief hit her like a storm from all sides.
I miss you, brother.
Wordlessly, she hopes this fresh start will bring her back to life, the way hopeless romantics search for a single arrow that gives them the love that feels like home, unweaving, unshakable, grounded and beautifully coloured, like the ribbon on the basket full of cookies—
They appear bright, a feeling Evie realises shes hit (most of the time) when she's not only holding in her grief but a homesick feeling submerging her until she forgets how to make her lungs work again. And she knows, with her heavy heart, her bad days have yet to fall into a good day.
A good day where there's laughter in her mouth, and a fresh lease of life under skin. She doesn't think anyone can give her the simplest of days ever again — not when today is so grey and blue.
However, she had to look on the bright side. Cora was starting to cheer up. And thank goodness, she couldn't have both of the unbelievably, unbearable and sad.
And if it makes Cora happy, Evie will welcome the Faith brothers with a baked goods—bare a grin, and possibly new friends (that's if she likes them.)
Anything to see her friend smile.
▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃
After hiding the bluest of days in her heart for two months. Evie nervously waits for her turn in a different shade—like the dawning sun-rise outside the green coloured kitchen.
The sky was a beautiful scene, and up ahead she sees a starling burn-orange truck —one she assumes is for tolling hay bales in the back and has one of those old radios to play country songs in— driving up the driveway, and somehow racing into her heart.
Why was Evie nervous? It wasn't like it was a date or anything?
And the fateful day of meeting him on her brother's birthday.
It was worthy of telling her brother —on the phone screen, his picture still hit a nerve, but Evie forced a smile when Cora walked back into the kitchen, a smile glowing on her red lips.
"It's settled. You're going to meet the Faith brothers in like, five minutes, so don't forget to breathe, girl!"
Evie laughs—relaxing the nervous tension from her body, and breathes as Cora instructed her to do. Meeting new people had Evie stumbling along a path with bumps in the road.
It left her unbelievably shy and wondering if Cora was secretly planning something else?
Like trying to get Evie out of her shy shell (which was not a bad thing) it was just the human interaction part that made Evie unbalanced. Baking fine, talking to boys, uncharted, undocumented terrain.
" I don't know what to say to strangers, Cor. Oh, gosh, I think I'm having a heart attack."
Cora waves her hand but giggles. "Be yourself. If that doesn't work, feed them cookies. Works like a charm,"
Only time will tell if you like them, little sis, her brother's voice echoes in her mind. And he was right. She needs the time ...to heal and maybe giving away sweet bakes to strangers might help her deal with her troubles of losing Lewis.
Yes, only time will tell.
Cora giggles. "You don't need luck. Just be you,"
Easy, peasy, lemon squeezy, right?
No.
Evie wants to escape out the back door and make a run for it. Hide in Cora's stables, groom the horses and just be left alone to her own devices, and cry for everything that's changing in her life (like how fast paced it's become, and how she's still adjusting to living in a state where the weather is always hot, there's threats of tornadoes and the men had a southern twang that leaves her wondering if it's a good or bad thing that it makes her heart speed up.)
And something else that makes her heart speed up in that very moment is the sound of a heavy knock at Cora's front door, and the relationship between two boys who are blood related since birth, chatting away.
One of the Faith brothers had arrived.
The other person was someone
And Evie was betting it was the older one - Daniel Faith.
She bet wrong.
It was Jacob Faith.
Just one look from him made the brunette girl's heart race when he caught her gaze from the past Cora's shoulder. It was a look she hadn't seen before. One that broke her world apart and maybe fixed it back together again like a safety pin or the orange ribbon around the wove basket.
Every single part of him was a blaze of colour. From the freckles on the bridge of his nose, to his unruly, untamed, flaming red hair, and the soft, brown eyes that glanced between the two girls in front of him.
"Oh," he says. "Cor, you didn't say you had friends over?" I don't think we've met," he adds, and proceeds to enter the doorway, Cora falls into the background, a sly grin on her face which the redhead boy cannot see, but Evie can. And it was so, so Cora like, Evie wants to throw a cookie in her face.
Jacob Faith was coming closer.
Too close.
Was it a good or bad thing Jacob Faith had come to collect the basket of cookies?
Evie couldn't make up her mind on that. Although, one thing she could make her mind upon seeing for the first time was Jacob Faith was cute as a button. Just as Cora had stated.
Evie wasn't a hopeless romantic by any means but Jacob Faith made quiet the impression on Evie Wilson. An unforgettable, first impression and these types of first impressions were critcical. A person decides if they liked one another within five seconds, and Evie realises she likes Jacob Faith.
So much so, it was impossible not to laugh when the boy stumbled to his feet and extended his hand out to her, giving her a dashing, heart-stopping smile.
"Hello," he says. His southern drawl makes Evie decide he's worth staying rooted to her spot, and maybe her time, too. "My name's Jacob. Jacob Faith but everyone around these parts calls me Jake. Please to meet you, Ma'am."
*
mel's author's note:
happy new year! this is the first update for the stages of loving you (and i hope you enjoy)
don't mind evie , she's just a small shy bean right now who misses her brother. :(
also, what do you think of cora ? isn't she the cutest! she's has the best baking gift ever!
don't worry though, jacob will be (spoiler alert) making evie feel like her world is about to change in the next few chapters, so we have this to look forward to, and i can't wait for you guys to really, really get to know him - this is kinda a little taste of what's to come and i hope you'll grow to love him). honestly, jacob is so cool, haha <3