Page 1 of Picking Daisies on Sundays

Prologue

“My heart's been borrowed and yours has been blue,”

– Lover,Taylor Swift

I love Levi Coldwell. I’min lovewith Levi Coldwell. My best friend of four years and counting.

It wasn’t love at first sight when we met freshman year. Especially when we both had braces and hormonal acne that changed location on our faces every day. The first day of high school, we found ourselves in two of the same classes, one we were each struggling with.

One audible sigh from Levi as he tried threading a needle in Sewing, and a C- on my first English assignment, was all it took to start helping one another.

I taught him how to sew and he helped me edit my essays. It was exclusively a business transaction two days a week, until we started talking about things that weren’t sewing or writing.

We had a list of adorations in common: our love for films, dedication to academics, loyalty to family, and the grief we went through—we weregoingthrough. We both had experiences with losing a father, and I think that’s what bonded us first.

When I had met him freshman year, my dad had passed three

months prior, while Mr. Coldwell had already been gone for two years.

Levi still carried grief with him like an empty wine bottle.

Fast forward four years and we were the best of friends, about to graduate high school together.

Years of texting every day, spending Saturday nights watching movies, and eating school lunches together had become habitual. They were my equivalent to having a morning routine or praying at night.

Months of seeing him in the stands as he cheered me on at my softball games while I hit foul balls, and nights full of tripping on that one cracked sidewalk on the way to each other’s houses.

I’ve witnessed him bake cupcakes for his sisters’ school functions, pulled their hair into ponytails, and sat still as they painted our nails. Those moments revealed every aspect of a person. And God, have I enjoyed every single one of his aspects.

We had become the type of best friends who came over for dinner every week and whose Moms knew each other’s most recent drama, gossiping over gift shop cups of coffee on the porch.

He lived down the street from me, so I’d walk over and have dinner with his family on Sunday nights, laughing as Trish recalled old stories and his sisters threw chips at each other across the table.

But it changed when junior year rolled around.

Levi had finally returned from being away with his family in Vermont during Christmas break. I had been bored all December waiting for him. So the day he returned, I rushed through the hall to the second locker on the left from our English class to see him.

Only to find him kissing someone.

My stomach clenched spotting him kissing Jennifer O'Brien. I was blindsided seeing him pressed up against that locker with Jennifer's hands crawling across his body like she was etching a sonnet into his skin. I couldn’t remember how long I stared; I couldn’t stop. It was like catching your celebrity crush in person. My throat dried up, my eyes filled with tears, and my feet refused to move until someone bumped into me, forcing me out of the way.

I had seen Vi—Levi—leave for dates and go to prom with other girls and I was always completely fine! There were always twinges of jealousy, but I brushed it off as protectiveness for my best friend. But I had never seen himkissanyone before. That…that felt wrong—intrusive actually.

And when I saw Jennifer taking his lips in hers, I regretted it instantly, because every emotion I didn’t know existed rose to the surface.

It’s been almost a year since it happened, and I still couldn’t erase the memory. But it was Senior Prom tonight and graduation tomorrow, and I couldn’t put this off any longer.

Scrapbooking didn’t work; watching endless romance films didn’t work; embroidering and quilting didn’t work; and writing a list of all of his cons definitely didn’t work because he had none.

The only con I could come up with was that he didn’t try to kiss me after the homecoming football game in September. We had been sitting in his car outside my house, and I had glanced at his lipsat leasttwice.

Anyways, none of it worked. I still loved him. And I couldn’t pretend anymore like my heart didn’t hit my ribcage when he winked at me in class or brushed my hand—andespeciallynotwhen

he twirled strands of my hair when we sat across from each other. I couldn’t pretend that my throat didn’t resemble the tightness of a twisted towel when girls flirted with him at parties. I couldn’t pretend like it meant nothing anymore.

I had to tell him, tonight, before we graduated tomorrow and left for college at the end of the summer. I couldn’t suffer another summer and then wonderwhat ifwhen he went to college and possibly met the love of his life.

The problem was: tonight was here now and I was terrified. I spent hours fixing and retailoring my dress so it fit perfectly, but