Half of My Heart ✔️

54 | pieces of us

I rifle through my drawers, ignoring my phone buzzing with an incoming phone call. The sixth one in the last two hours. Having enough of this, I grab my phone and navigate to Levi's contact.

I hit the red Block button and throw my phone onto my bed without so much as a second thought. Without the annoying sound of it buzzing, I can focus on finding what I'm looking for.

Finally, my fingers graze the familiar material, and I pull Archer's jersey out from the back of my closet. Triumphant, I sit on my bed with the clothing item in my hands, smoothing out the wrinkles. But my victory fades when I flip over the jersey.

Griffin. Jack's jersey, not Archer's.

I let the jersey fall limp into my lap as I stare at it, remembering the night Jack gave it to me. My heart twists as I envision the overjoyed gleam in his eyes when I accepted it. The look that only got brighter and brighter the more we . . .

My breath catches in my throat.

. . . the more we fell for each other.

I force myself to hang the jersey back up in my closet, trying to shove all my feelings and memories of Jack away with it. Instead, I remind myself of the finality in Jack's voice when he said we should just stay friends, and of all the pain and confusion I caused him.

He's right; he deserves to be someone's first choice.

Repeating that in my head, I reach back in my closet to find Archer's jersey. After locating and pulling it off its hanger, I'm about to close my closet when I see another clothing item that stops me in my tracks.

With a much harsher hand, I yank Levi's leather jacket off the closet shelf, clutching it in my hands and wondering when the hell I put it in here. I thought I gave it back to Levi on New Years Eve. I reason that I must've put it back on before I came back to my dorm.

I'm tempted to laugh, thinking back on all the times I attempted to return this stupid jacket to him. And somehow, it always ended up back in my hands.

Never again.

With more force than necessary, I ball up the jacket into a tight ball and shoot it into my garbage bin, smiling when I make it in.

Then I slip on Archer's jersey over a white tank top. Archer, Jack, and the rest of the team have been on the road for the conference tournament for the past two weeks. They're on a winning streak, and tonight is the final.

It's being held two hours away, so my parents made the drive there since its relatively close to our house, trusting Dani to stay at a friend's house for the night. Dani called me earlier today, promising me that she'd be good tonight. She slipped in an overdose joke that I didn't appreciate, but seemed to be fine nonetheless.

Mya and I decided to just watch the game at a campus bar since it will go on until late.

I do my hair and makeup quickly, already late to pickup Mya from her apartment. On the way out, I pick up my keys from on top of my dresser. Out of the bowl Levi gave me to replace the one he broke.

I pick up the bowl and throw it into the garbage bin to join the leather jacket before shutting the door behind me.

♔