Trust was a big word, and I'd learned it the hard way that I shouldn't have put my trust in anything else but me. When the flowers failed to bloom in spring or the sun forgot to shine in summer, I would still be alive and ready for autumn because all I needed was me. People promised and bailed, yet life went on.

And that was what pushed me to survive the life after Blake, after I made my biggest mistake.

My plan to spend more time in the sun this summer went out of the window. Task after task, project after project flooded my desk and my agenda, and of course, I didn't have a choice but to get them all done before the end of the third quarter. Well, I did have a choice, but I chose not to have choices.

The summer sun would still come back next year, but if I missed nailing these assignments, it would hurt my annual work appraisal. As a result, my goal to snatch a junior manager seat in the organizational structure & policies next year would go down the drain. Being an eighty-eight-year-old and stuck in the supervisor level wasn't how I planned it.

Noah's company gathering had become a distant memory, and we hadn't seen each other again ever since. Funny enough, it had nothing to do with me bumping into Blake. Noah was now drowning in the new retail project out of town, and it took him a month of going back and forth until he could slowly delegate the tasks to his team. To some degree, we were so much alike; we chose to become corporate slaves. Maybe that was what connected us in the first place.

Looking back to the gathering, I was glad that Blake didn't make the situation any more awkward between us. I never came back to that garden after excusing myself to the ladies' room. For a moment, I wondered if he would try to find me inside the restaurant, but as time went by, it was only Noah who checked on me every thirty minutes. There was nothing left between me and Blake.

What did I expect? We broke up, we took our separate ways, and now we were basically strangers.

The thing was that when we broke up with a boyfriend, we also forced our mutual friends to break up. Well, not directly but we made them kind of choose to include us or include our ex if they wanted to plan something together. I made it easy for everyone by disappearing completely since I was the one who left the town, but this time was different. The wedding of my bestie, Lea, and Blake's cousin was coming closer, and there was no way I would behave selfishly by removing myself from the most important moment of Lea's life, especially when she asked me to be her bridesmaid.

"I need to break the news before anyone else does," she said to me while biting her lower lip, her face all I could see on my laptop screen. Diamond-shaped face, big round eyes, pointy nose, and thin lips which made almost a straight line. It was just our little routine to catch up once a month, but since we had more things to discuss for her wedding, we chatted every weekend now. "But please, don't kill me."

I rolled on my bed, not bothering to put on clothes because Garry, her fiance, was not home at the moment. "What news? Wait, it's not about him, right?"

"Ugh." Lea groaned.

"Then I don't wanna hear about it. Let him be dead, married, having kids, running naked across the country, I still don't want to know." It was a straight lie because I did wonder if he was married when I saw him the last time, but it was just a moment of weakness. I cleared my throat and corrected myself, "I don't need to know."

"I know and I've never talked about him in the past four years, have I?" she replied, a low beeping sound in the background. "But I swear it's not about him, but" —she wrinkled her nose– "it has something to do with him...well not entirely. Wait, my coffee is ready. Be right back!"

In one blink of an eye, Lea disappeared from my screen, replaced by her blue couch and throw pillows with a mosaic pattern. I was trying to make sense of her last lines which sounded more like a riddle to me, but the word coffee kicked my brain to visualize the hot, brewing, inviting black liquid, with the bitterness that gave me the weird sensation of clean, crisp, and pure.

I propped myself up, groaning in the process, and took the laptop with me to the kitchen. Theodora jumped out of my vanity chair she'd been claiming the whole morning and stretched herself until her body formed a bow. She bounced and followed me downstairs, overtaking me before we reached the kitchen.

"I need to put you on the table for now. I also need coffee," I said when Lea's face reappeared on the screen. My cat jumped up on my breakfast stool, to the kitchen island before positioning her face on the camera. "Seems like Dora wants to have a word with you."

"Dora, sweetheart, move aside a bit." Lea made a weird noise that was supposed to encourage Dora to move away from the camera, but of course, it didn't work. Lea's poppysmic noise and probably her big dark eyes urged Dora to poke my screen with her paw.

"Dora, no!" I warned her.

"She really absorbs your mood on a daily basis."

"Tell me about it," I said, turning up my voice since I stood by the kitchen counter, a little farther from my laptop. "So, what was that about? What news will make me want to kill you?"

"So, the wedding planner couldn't deliver the quality that the great Handerson family approved." Lea snorted. "And after a long and windy discussion, we decided to keep it in the family."

I turned my head to her. "What is that supposed to mean?"

"Bridget is taking over."

My eyes widened. "Bridget Bridget?"

"Bridget Bridget."

"Okay. And which part should I be killing you?"

"She said she needed to discuss something with you and" —she winced— "she asked for your current number."

"And you gave it to her?" When Lea nodded, I groaned. "I really hate that woman's guts. And you, woman," I said, gesturing the carafe in my hand at her, "going to pay for this. For giving my number to her."

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry! My head was just all over the place. But she said it was for the wedding purpose. Nothing else, I swear!"

I turned around and resumed setting up my coffee machine, ignoring Lea who was talking at maximum speed to beg me not to get angry. I promised her that I would do anything to support her big day since being married to someone with a famous last name was not going to be easy for her, but talking directly with Blake's sister was never on my agenda. She was too stuck up and too nosey for my liking. Plus, she never liked me. I was almost sure that she must have been laughing when she heard the news about me and her little brother splitting up.

But again, it was all about Lea, not about me. I needed to swallow any distasteful lumps in my throat if I wanted to show my support.

After I pushed the "on" button on my coffee machine, I swiveled on my heel and Lea's worried face was the first thing I saw. "It's fine."

"What?"

"I said it's fine. I'm not going to kill you. Yet. But she can call me and I will see what she wants from me."

Lea winced again. "Are you sure? I told her not to call you until I said she could."

I smiled at my best friend. "I'll be ready anytime."

She heaved a sigh of relief. "For a second there I thought you would hang up on me and bail on my wedding party," she said while chuckling awkwardly. "Thanks, Jen. Things have been crazy and out of hand. Everyone wants this and that, and I almost had no say in my own fucking wedding plan."

"That's frustrating. Sometimes I wish you and Garry really eloped last year."

"We almost did it. Like, we packed our bags that night."

"But you were too considerate and did not want to create long-term problems between him and with his family, which is very noble of you."

She shrugged. "I can suck this up. It's only a few months of my life, and once the wedding rush is done, we can move on and they will leave us alone. But if we eloped, it would cost Garry's relationship with his dad. It's just not worth it, you know."

I stared at my best friend of sixteen years, thinking how she'd never changed since the day I met her. She might have been wild and troublesome, but she was always thoughtful when it came to people she cared for. "You made a great choice, Lee. And like I said, I'm here to support you."

"Thanks, Jen." She groaned while making a fist on her strawberry blonde lock, which I believed was her seventh color of hair dye. Despite the jet-black hair as her natural hair color, I had never seen it again since she was fourteen. Maybe only the parts that were closer to the roots when her hair began to grow.

"I saw him a few weeks ago," I blurted, completely not planning it. Blake was always a restricted topic between us.

"Huh? B– him?" Her eyes bulged. "You did?"

I nodded as I crossed my arms over my chest. "He moved back home. I know you didn't warn me because I asked you not to talk about him at all, but I think for something like this, I should have gotten a little bit of a hint. I really didn't see it coming."

Lea sighed. "Garry told me I should warn you but I just tried to respect your wish, you know. Though I did plan to tell you when you're here for my party. It's easier to deal with you when we meet in person in case you throw a fit at me."

I chuckled softly at her last line. "That would be the case, yeah."

"Where did you see him?"

"In Noah's new company's brunch party."

"What was he doing there?"

"His dad bought the shares but he couldn't make it because of health issues."

"Oh." It took a few seconds delay before her eyes bulged, and she made a strangled noise. "Oh! It's where Noah is working now? Fucking damn."

"I had no idea it was Andrew Industry that bought the shares. It's not like Noah and I talk about work stuff." My coffee machine made a gurgling noise, a sign that it was almost done brewing. I opened my dishwasher to pick up my usual mug. "And then he walked into the venue while everyone was welcoming him. He didn't see me at first, and I was about to find my exit to escape him but" —I shrugged— "no luck."

"Ouch." Lea winched. "Was he being nice to you?"

"Nice isn't the word, but he was polite. We didn't really talk, though." The scene that afternoon when Blake was very fast to compose himself once he saw me flashed through my mind. His formality and his distant attitude were something I needed to get used to again.

"Are you okay?"

I pursed my lips, thinking about the answer to her question. It was hard to unravel what I felt at the moment. I never talked about him to anyone all these years, not even to Dora. Blake was like an unnamed file that I shoved into the supposed-to-be-forgotten drawer. But when I saw him that afternoon, the resentment that came with the memory bounced up to the surface, though I'd managed to push it back to the back of my mind.

"It was quite shocking, to be honest. I didn't like to be caught off guard like that."

"But what do you feel now?"

I shrugged. "Fine, I guess." I frowned at my own reply but refused to give it more thought. "It's been four years. What should I be feeling now?"