All Chapters of FALLING FOR MY BEST FRIEND'S FATHER : Chapter 141 - Chapter 150

“Mom,” Lily's voice came out. But no answer.The house was different at two in the morning.Not quieter exactly, the ocean never went quiet, but emptied out in a way that felt deliberate, like the daylight hours had been performing something and this was what remained when the performance finally stopped. Just the bare bones of things. The creak of the walls, the pull of the tide, the narrow strip of light under Lily's door that told Emma she wasn't the only one who couldn't sleep.She'd tried. She'd lie on her bed for two hours with her eyes at the ceiling and her mind running laps around everything that had happened since sunrise, which felt like approximately four years ago. Diane's arrival. The conversation on the front steps, voices low and controlled, that Emma had watched from the kitchen window like someone observing a weather system through glass. The way Marcus had held the envelope and said nothing. The way Lily had appeared at the bottom of the stairs and stood there quiet

The beach was turning gold.Emma had been watching it happen for the better part of an hour — the light shifting by degrees from afternoon white to something warmer and more honest, the kind of light that made everything look like it was being seen for the last time and the first time simultaneously. She'd taken her shoes off. The sand was still warm from the day, holding the heat in its deeper layers the way the earth always did, long after the sun had moved on.She wasn't waiting. She was just present. In the way that you are when you've run out of things to prepare for, and the only thing left is whatever actually comes next.The footsteps behind her were light and familiar."He's ready," Lily said. "Are you?"Emma looked at her best friend standing on the sand in the gold afternoon light, her blonde hair loose, her expression carrying something that was simultaneously the most complicated and the most simple thing Emma had ever seen on a human face.She stood up immediately. "Yes,

Marcus called, and the call lasted almost 30 minutes.Marcus didn't plan it that way. He'd told himself he would check in, make sure Emma had gotten home safely, keep it brief and reasonable and appropriate. He'd told himself a lot of things that summer. None of them had held.She picked up on the second ring. "I was wondering when you'd call.""I said I would.""Men say a lot of things."He'd laughed at that, his hand brushing his head.After that, some minutes later, he sat down. He is alone now. No Lily, no Emma. He'd finish dinner, wash his plate, sit down again at his desk pretending to review blueprints, glance at the phone and at eight fifty-nine he'd pick up his phone. He called Emma again.They talked about everything that didn't matter and everything that did.She told him she was terrified of her roommate assignment. He told her about the coastal property project that was slowly eating his sanity. She told him her mother had started looking at her differently, though she co

She meant it when she said it. She meant every word.She was still meaning it a few minutes later, sitting in her parked car outside her apartment building, when Lily's name lit up her screen, and beneath it, a message that made her blood go completely still.*Dad just called me. He said he needs to tell me something. About the summer.*Emma. What did he tell you tonight?It is about Auntie Patricia, and she would like to have a conversation with both of us. Emma didn't say anything again, and she ended the call.The dorm room was smaller than Emma had expected.Not uncomfortably small, just honest. Two beds, two desks, two narrow windows looking out over a courtyard where someone had already locked a bicycle to the wrong post. Emma stood in the middle of it on move-in day with a duffel bag over one shoulder and understood, with sudden clarity, that summer was genuinely over.Not metaphorically. Literally, physically, carpet-and-cinderblock over.Her roommate Sofia arrived twenty minu

Danny looked up. Emma shot him a look that communicated, in the ancient sibling language, not a word. He went back to his food.Marcus set his fork down.And he told her, the same way he'd told Emma over candlelight in the city, but plainer, even more stripped back. The years that were good. The years that weren't. Staying for Lily, which was true, and also being afraid to fail, which was truer. How he'd emerged from it, understanding himself less than he'd expected and needing to relearn some fairly basic things about what he actually wanted from his own life.Emma's mother listened with her hands folded on the table. She didn't offer comfort. She didn't soften her expression into false sympathy. She just listened, completely, the way intelligent people listen when they're actually forming a judgment rather than just waiting for their turn.When he finished, the table was quiet."And what makes you certain you're ready now?" she asked.Marcus looked across the table at Emma.Not a gl