It was Riley, though. It was so much Riley that people thought it wasn't. She locked everything bad away and pretended it wasn't there, smiling and twirling and being quirky. She didn't have to face it if she pretended that it wasn't there. If no on else knew that it was there.
Dealing with her mother disappearing was hard, because everyone knew how much it had to hurt her.
She wound up gawking at him. More than friends? They weren't more than friends. They were terrible at being more than friends! As much as she wanted to be more than friends, maybe even needed something like that right now, it seemed impossible.