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“You sure?” she hedges. “I didn’t want you to think?—”
“All I want to think,” I profess as I lean back in my chair, “is that you’re happy and thriving. Nothing else matters.”
Liv’s expression softens before she gives me a weak grin. “Are you? What have you been doing?”
“Same ole. Nothing new to report over here.”
“But you’re good?”
I cock a brow. “I’m breathing, aren’t I? That’s gotta be good for something.”
“I want you to be doing more than that.”
“And what is it that you’d have me do?”
“Anything but work all the time,” she drawls. “I want you to hang out with the boys and?—”
“That’s not all that it’s cracked up to be. Trust me.”
Liv taps the screen as if to get me to stop teasing—when I’m not—and focus. “Hudson, I don’t want you to be lonely.”
“I keep myself well entertained.”
“How?”
“I have memories of you to keep vivid in my mind, Op. I have a lot of material to keep my mind active.”
A slight blush covers her cheeks before her name is called out somewhere in the background. “I gotta go. I only got a five-minute break.”
“Sounds like they’re workin’ you to death.”
“Not anything like my old boss.” She winks at me and then brings the screen closer to her face. “Text me later, okay?”
“Sure thing, baby.”
Liv waves at me before my screen goes blank again.
What are you doing?
This isn’t healthy for either of us. We’re more fucked than we were before because now she lives across the country with a bunch of surfer boys and sunny days.
Whereas I’m still here.
Actively stagnant again while Liv lives her best life.
I want that for her.
But I also still want her in the grand scheme of things that involve me, too.
thirty-seven
. . .
LIV
“Well, how would you put it, Liv?” Mia carps back at me with a scowl. “That man has me showing up at his kid’s parent-teacher conference. I’m not a mother. That’s not my kid. How the hell do you tell a teacher that some little girl who paints hearts with permanent markers on other kids’ faces will do better? Make it make sense to me.”
I press my lips together because I’m really only honed in on one piece of information. “How the hell did she get a hold of permanent markers?” Mia throws a small pretzel rod at me and connects with my cheek. “Ouch.”
