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I cup his face with both hands, grinding against him, wantingmore, but then the music stops and the song changes, and when the next one begins I freeze. A minimal drumbeat, followed by a synthesizer backing track trickles through the crack under the door, dragging me out of this moment and into the past.
Cruz and I are soaked to the bone thanks to a freak summer storm, and we’re both quiet as the crushing weight of the end makes it hard to think or breathe. I’d read about heartbreak and seen it in movies, but I didn’t think it would feel like this. It hurts like hell. As if my chest has been cracked open and my heart bled dry.
A million thoughts race through my mind—questions followed by rebuttals to stop this madness—then I hear Bono singing at a low register, and I’m pulled out of the memory and back in the present.
Cruz stares at me, eyes haunted, and I know he’s just had the same memory. It’s hard to hear this song and not. “With or Without You,” the patron song of heartbreak. It was playing when he said we were over and why I can’t listen to it even now.
“Move,” I croak.
“I can’t.” He lowers his forehead to mine, bringing both hands to my neck and stroking my cheeks with his thumbs. “Not yet.”
“Please,” I whisper, the tears pricking my eyes, dangerously close to falling.
He lifts his head and looks at me, and when I see the same sadness and regret in his eyes that I’m feeling, he steps back slowly, and I slip off the sink.
I need to get out of here. Before I start crying and never stop. But when I push past him on my way to the door, he grabs my wrist and stops me. “Don’t go.”
Summoning every ounce of courage that I can, I turn around and face him.
“This won’t happen again.” He lets go of my wrist and I pullit to me. “I’ll stay out of your way this summer, and then you can leave and go back to your life, and I can go back to trying to figure out mine. Okay?”
“Figure out yours?” He shakes his head. “Ellery, wait, what’s going on? Why aren’t you going to Yale?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Don’t worry about it? Of course I’ll worry about it. I didn’t walk away so you could not go to college and do all the things that you are supposed to.”
“Well guess what? You did walk away and now I’m not yours to worry about anymore. Just as you wanted.”
“I didn’t want that.” He looks down, shaking his head. “I had to. I couldn’t…we couldn’t…”
“No.” I hold up my hand stopping him. I don’t want to hear any of the excuses he used the night he broke my heart. “You could have,wecould have, if only you believed in us the way that I did.”
He looks up, eyes pained. “I did believe in us. More than you know. But I had to let you go. For your future, and mine. You were still in high school, and I had baseball.”
“Baseball.” I roll my eyes. I knew how much Cruz loved the game. I just wish he wanted me half as much. Maybe then he would have fought for me. “I was young, I’ll give you that. But you wanted baseball, more than you ever wanted me.”
“That’s not fair.” He shakes his head. “Haven’t you ever wanted something so much, had a dream that was so big, that just the thought alone, hurt?”
“Yeah,” I straighten, “I have. And for a moment I thought you did, too. But not anymore. I’ll take a broken dream over a broken heart any day.”
Before he can respond, I turn and reach for the door and yank it open, leaving him to stare after me the same way I did him the night he ended us and left me behind.
***
I storm down the stairs and race through the foyer, making a beeline for the kitchen. When I push through the door and don’t see Jenica, I lean against the counter and blow out an angry breath.
Earlier when I told her that I was heading upstairs to talk with Royce, she said she’d wait for me in the kitchen, preferring to drink alone than pretending to like shiny happy party people, as she called them.
Seeing I’d been gone longer than planned and knowing Jenica wouldn’t leave without me, I figure she’s probably trying to find me, and decide to stay put.
“Something wrong?” an unfamiliar voice asks.
I whip around and see Cruz’s friend Jake and a tall leggy blonde holed up in the corner. He has an easy smile on his face, while she looks as if she’s about to murder me.
“Sorry.” I place my hand on the counter. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
He lifts the red cup that he’s holding and takes a sip. “You aren’t.”
