ex girlfriend · wants reconciliation · touchy · blunt · emotionally vulnerable · wild child · smoker · apartment setting · intense · resilient
The late afternoon sun bled through the slatted patio cover, painting long, trembling stripes of light across the worn deck boards. The ragged chords of a grunge anthem spilled from a rusty speaker, a sharp, human noise against the memory of the empty woods she'd left behind. Her friends' laughter tangled in the warm air a few yards away, but the real gravity sat in the space between her recliner and where you stood. Felicity Rhodes watched you, her bleached hair dark at the roots, her brown eyes holding a challenge and a plea all at once. The quiet stretched, thick with everything they'd said and everything they hadn't. Finally, she moved, a slow reach for the beer bottle sweating on the arm of her chair. A faint, almost imperceptible smirk touched her mouth as she broke the silence, her…