Brooke Foster

Brooke Foster (she/her) is currently a junior English major and Social Media Strategies minor working as an Embedded Tutor for Rider’s first-year composition courses. While she enjoys sharing stories of all kinds, Brooke tends to gravitate toward fictional works of science-fiction, mystery, and the occasional romance novel. Outside of writing, you can find Brooke trying to cross books off of her endless to-be-read (TBR) list or discovering her latest comfort show on Netflix.

Amelia hummed to herself as she pushed the metal shopping cart down the endless aisles of Johnson’s Grocery. The squeaky wheel in the front of the pushcart would have annoyed most people, its high pitched whines scraping the air like nails on a chalkboard with every turn. To Amelia, it was a wonderful reminder of the task at hand. It soothed her anxieties as she stood on her tiptoes to reach for the nearest box of Cheerios. Even though she was just at the store last month, it felt like her prize was four yards instead just four inches away. 

There’s no way she was shorter, right? She was only twenty-one. Humans don’t start shrinking until they’re at least thirty. She still had nine years!

A large hand reached out and pried the vibrant yellow and red box from its skyscraper of a prison. It appeared in Amelia’s field of vision with a wiggle merely a moment later. 

“Allow me to help you with that,” a familiar voice said to her right; a voice smooth as silk and warm as a fresh cup of coffee. The same voice put the brakes on happiness with those famous five words meant to be a consolation instead of a biting attack. 

No. It couldn’t be. 

When she turned around, she felt her heart as it sank to her feet. There he was. All five-foot-eleven-inches of Sawyer King. With his shining chocolate brown eyes she used to get lost in for hours and deceptively soft maroon sweater that made for the best movie night pillow. 

For Amelia, it had been a painfully cruel six months. Twenty-four agonizingly long weeks. One-hundred-and-eighty days of her practically rolling onto the floor and shuffling through the monotony that was her daily routine. It had taken her six years to finally get him out of her head – free of the longing and crying under covers, desperation to hear the old station wagon that used to be his deadbeat father’s sailing into her driveway. When she left for New York, she never looked back…at least, until her own father had a heart attack and needed to be taken care of. 

But was Sawyer fazed by it at all? Apparently not, because God, he still looked as perfect and put together as always. 

“Still having trouble reaching the top shelf, sweetheart?” he teased in a tone so rich, Amelia would have thought she won the lottery. “I think you need to get yourself those platform shoes you always used to talk about. Otherwise you’ll be asking us tall people for help the rest of your life.” 

Sawyer said it so casually, it almost fooled Amelia into thinking it was as if nothing had changed; as if he had never broken her heart and she could nuzzle her face into his sweater without a second thought. “So what have you been up to?” He leaned casually against her cart, trying his best not to trigger the squeaky wheel (she still seemed to be cursed by grocery stores). “How has life been treating the great Amelia Harper? I heard about your dad. How’s he doing?”

“Pretty well.” Good, keep the tone even, Amelia. Don’t let him see that it bothers you. “I have an exposé going out next week for the entertainment section. Dad’s doing better. Still won’t listen to me when I tell him to stay in the damn bed, but what are you going to do?” 

Sawyer nodded. “Always knew you were going places,” he said, sending warmth against her cheeks. “Buuuut I’ll have you know you’re not the only big shot in town.” He paused to stretch his back out against the cart with a smirk. “Oh yeah, I’ve got a real classy job now. Couldn’t be better. ‘Get to see all the stars anytime I want.”

“Oh really?” Amelia crossed her arms over her chest, eyebrow raised in challenge. “And how are you connecting with these Hollywood stars in the small town of Hartley?”

“Working at the Best Buy down on Mayfield. Have you seen the size of those TVs there?! It’s almost like Julia Roberts is right there next to me.”  

She couldn’t help the snort that escaped as Sawyer sent a teasing wink in her direction. “Sounds like you’ve got it made, Your Highness. Mr. King, living large and in charge.” 

“You know it,” he said with a wink and an exaggerated flick of his hair. 

Before she could stop herself, Amelia wondered how it’d feel to run her fingers through it again. Would it be as soft as she remembered? Did he still use the shampoo he knew she loved because it smelled like grapefruit? As quick as the thoughts came, they dissipated when he rapped his knuckles on the shopping cart handle.  

“I should head out,” he remarked. “Hartley High is hosting the winter formal tonight– hey, do you remember when we went with Lacey and Derek and all of them? That was crazy!” Without waiting for a response, he continued. “Well, anyway, Mr. Lewis wants me to chaperone. Have to make sure there’s no risky business going on, if you know what I mean. God, I remember how hammered everyone was after we went to Derek’s afterwards! Dave took that whole keg!”

Of course she remembered that night. Well, at least, parts of it. That was the night Sawyer had started out by promising her between stolen sips of spiked punch that forever had nothing on them. As the night went on, however, his tone began to change. . .

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(six years ago)

“What do you think it’s going to be like?” he had asked. 

In the dark of her room, Sawyer’s voice bounced off of the walls. The reverberations combined with the scent– his scent– had her surrounded by the boy who had captured her heart. Amelia had needed to fight back a sigh of contentment when the vanilla smell of his hairspray and something else that was just so Sawyer entered her airways. It was refreshing, like the damp smell of morning dew, or the air after a dense storm. She wanted to wrap herself up in the feeling his close proximity gave and never move. 

The two of them were laying across her mattress, pinky fingers barely brushing as Sawyer reached his free hand over to trace his thumb against her upper thigh. She could feel his curious dark stare trail over her face, creating a path of invisible flames which burnt her skin. 

Amelia’s own gaze was plastered to the stick-on stars littered across the ceiling. Truth be told, she was surprised they had maintained their faint green glow. The things were over a decade old, carefully mapped out and adhered to the plaster by her parents when she was eight-years-old and going through the astrology phase. It was a short-lived hyperfixation, but the stars always seemed to be a comforting sight before she drifted off to sleep.

It was going to be weird to adapt to life without them every night.   

“You getting deep with me, King?” She tried her best to keep her voice as level as possible. It wasn’t that difficult of a question to interpret with graduation looming, but she was afraid to keep the conversation going. “What is what going to be like?” 

“You know,” he continued, “you going off to college and me…well, not.”

And there it was: the elephant whose presence has been stifling since Amelia had received the news in the mail. NYU had been a pretty far reach, but she would be lying if she didn’t feel the slightest amount of satisfaction when holding that purple and white envelope in her hands. 

“Do we have to have this conversation?” She didn’t want to look at him, too afraid tears would start to build up at the thought of leaving him. “You’re acting like my room is filled with boxes already. I only submitted my deposit yesterday.” 

“Yeah, I, uh, I know. And I’m so proud of you. Really, I am! It’s just…it’s going to be hard not…not seeing you every day.” His thumb moved away from her leg and reached backward to skim against his neck. The mattress dipped as he situated his right arm behind his head. His left pinky wiggled out against hers, though, as though he was afraid to lose physical contact with her. 

A small smile tugged at Amelia’s mouth as she fought the wobble of her lower lip. Without thinking, she hooked her pinky with his own. It had become an unspoken form of communication between the two of them over the years – a simple means of reminding the other that they weren’t alone.  

“I know,” she choked out, frowning at the way her whisper flitted through the air. Amelia could hardly recognize her own voice. It sounded hoarse, like smoke was caught in her lungs. Her heart thudded heavily against her chest and she had silently willed it to slow down. “We still have a few weeks before graduation, then there’s the whole summer…”

There was a brief period of silence as her voice trailed off. It hung over them like a cloud, each passing second feeling like an eternity as neither dared to speak. After a while, there was a sharp inhale followed by a long puff of air.  

“I can’t.” Sawyer’s voice, although soft due to the late hour, cut into her eardrums like the sharpest of blades. 

“What do you mean, you can’t?”

“I can’t…I can’t do this, Amelia,” he chose his words carefully, as though tip-toeing around a fragile floorboard. “You’re going to find someone better. Hell, you deserve to find someone better than someone who’s probably just going to be mopping floors at Johnson’s for the rest of his life.”

“Sawyer–”

There was a soft shuffling to Amelia’s right as she tried to reach for him. Sawyer’s dark form entered her vision as he sat up on the bed, then bent down to reach for his discarded tie and dress shoes. Ignorant of her gentle jostling of his shoulders, he adjusted his appearance and slowly stood. “I’m sorry,” he said after a moment, “but I can’t screw up your future.”

She felt as though she’d been slapped in the face. “You can’t mean that,” she stuttered out as she fumbled to switch on the lamp beside her bed, the soft warm yellow glow casting a shadow over half of his face.

“I do.” Sawyer’s shoulders tensed. “I really am sorry. It’s not you. It’s me.”

⧫ ⧫ ⧫ ⧫ ⧫ ⧫ ⧫ ⧫ ⧫ ⧫ ⧫ ⧫ ⧫ ⧫ ⧫ 

“Anyway, that’s enough reminiscing.” With a small shake of his head and a small wave in her direction, Sawyer started to saunter out of the aisle. “Enjoy your Cheerios, shortstack. Call me if you need any more help reaching the top shelves while you’re here in Hartley.” 

As he walked away, Amelia didn’t feel the twinge that always appeared in her heart when she thought about him. In fact, she felt lighter than she had in months. Hearing Sawyer talk about the high school formal reminded her just why they didn’t work. He was the type to hold onto high school for far too long, sticking around their hometown while Amelia was ready to move on to a future that didn’t involve Hartley. They had simply gone down two different paths, a fact she had been hung up on for far too long…until now. 

“If you don’t leave after graduation,” a friend of hers once said, “you’re never getting out. You’re like a painting – trapped as the person you once were.”

As she watched the retreating figure of what (or rather who) she thought would be the only love of her life, Amelia came to realize that maybe, just maybe, that advice wasn’t too far off. 

If she had stayed in Hartley, she would come home to takeout from the local burger hut and DVDs purchased with the employee discount. She’d hear the clunking of old trucks and barely alive hummers as they hiccuped down the streets. Her favorite coffee shop would always know her order. It would have been easy to keep up with the latest gossip in the town paper. A simple life in the world of which she was comfortable. 

Yet if she didn’t go to New York, if she hadn’t done the thing that scared her shitless, Amelia would have never discovered her love for the city. Hartley seemed too…slow now for her, too still to really enjoy life. In New York, everything was rapid; either you ran to catch a cab, or you were hobbling up to the 34th floor after racing two blocks. Amelia loved her apartment with its blue-coated walls and suspicious damp dark patch on the ceiling. She can’t fall asleep anymore without hearing the sounds of bustling streets and muffled conversation outside her slightly raised window. She couldn’t wait to go back to nights of randomly selected takeout from places she found just wandering the streets after work, her trusty audio recorder at the ready to pick up any action she may come across. The city was a place for action, a place for hope, a place for stories just waiting to be written. One day she would make it into that penthouse overlooking Central Park, a laptop securely in her lap as she flipped between editing her recent scoop and the rough draft of her soon-to-be bestselling novel. 

Most importantly, if she had stayed in Hartley, she never would have met Max — someone who has made her life better in ways Sawyer never could. She couldn’t fathom the thought of trading her best friend for Sawyer; not in a heartbeat. Now, Amelia saw past the need for romance, focusing on the need to explore the life she was excited to make and the dreams that could finally come true.