LOVELORNED (CHAPTER THREE)
544 Words
Chapter 3: He Wrote a Book About Me
Four years.
That’s how long it took for me to stop checking my phone at 3:15.
That’s how long it took for me to stop owning a red umbrella.
That’s how long it took for me to stop being the girl who waited.
I was 20 now.
Sophomore at UIC. Major: Psychology.
Goal: Help people who sit on curbs in the rain.
Goal #2: Never be that girl again.
Then my roommate Kayla screamed.
“MAYA! OH MY GOD! LOOK!”
She shoved her phone in my face. t****k.
A video with 8.2 million views.
A guy in a bookstore. Black hoodie. Messy hair. Reading from a book.
His voice.
Low. Rough. The same voice that said “I promise” in a green envelope.
“...and she sat with me,” he read. “In the rain. When everyone else ran.
She didn’t ask me to be okay. She just stayed.
Her name was Maya. And I left her at Navy Pier.”
The video caption:
LOVELORNED by Caleb Reed. Out now. #booktok #emotional #secondchance
My stomach dropped.
I didn’t buy the book.
I didn’t have to.
By that night, 47 people had tagged me in it.
High school classmates. Old teammates. Strangers.
“Is this you??”
“This is about you right??”
“The girl with the red umbrella??”
I found a PDF at 2 AM.
I told myself I just needed to see if it was really me.
It was.
Chapter 1: The curb.
Chapter 4: The hot chocolate.
Chapter 11: Navy Pier.
Chapter 20: The green envelopes.
He changed my last name.
He changed the city.
But he didn’t change me.
He wrote about the way I bit my lip when I was nervous.
About Lily’s journal.
About how I said “broken boys break you back.”
He even wrote the dedication:
For M. The girl with the red umbrella. I’m sorry I didn’t show up.
I closed the PDF and threw my phone across the room.
He doesn’t get to do that.
He doesn’t get to leave and then make money off my worst day.
The next morning, there was a knock on my dorm door.
Kayla answered it.
Then she looked at me with wide eyes.
“Uhm... Maya? There’s a guy here to see you.”
I walked to the door.
And there he was.
Caleb Reed.
Older. Taller. Still had those green eyes.
But now he was on every billboard.
LOVELORNED. A Novel by Caleb Reed.
He was holding a red umbrella.
And a green envelope.
“Maya,” he said.
Four years later.
And the first thing he said was my name.
“I know I don’t deserve 5 minutes,” he said. “But can I have 5 minutes?”
My hands were shaking.
Four years of therapy. Four years of healing.
And one look at him and I was 17 again.
“What do you want, Caleb?” I asked.
He held out the green envelope.
“I owe you an explanation,” he said. “For Navy Pier.
And I owe you a question.”
He swallowed.
“Can we try again?”
TO BE CONTINUED...
Chapter 4: The Question
- Writer
