“Where else would we be?”
“Anywhere,” I admitted. “You, probably on a beach somewhere. Me, I don’t know—New York, maybe.”
He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “You still planning on leaving?”
“I got in,” I said. “NYU.”
“That’s incredible, M.”
I hesitated. “I might defer a year.”
His eyebrows lifted. “Why would you do that?”
I didn’t answer right away. I wanted to tell him the truth—that I’d waited half my life for him to look at me the way he was looking at me now. That I didn’t want this to end before it had even begun.
But then he squeezed my hand, too gentle and too careful, murmuring, “You’d be crazy not to go.”
It was meant as encouragement. But the tone of his voice made my stomach sour.
We danced a little longer, swaying beneath the strings of light, the world shrinking to the space between us. Every time I blinked, I tried to memorize it—his laugh, the way his pulse beat steadily beneath my palm, and his eyes flitting across my face as he pulled me closer than I thought possible.
When the song ended, he leaned in until I could feel his breath against my ear. “You’re going to write about us someday,” he murmured.
I smiled, trying not to let my voice shake. “Maybe I already am.”
He laughed, low and warm, and brushed his knuckles against my jaw before pulling away. “I’m gonna get us some punch.”
I watched him go, the room shimmering and spinning and slightly unreal. In my head, this was only the beginning. I didn’t know yet that it was already the middle of the end.
???
PRESENT DAY
Isat on my mom’s couch at home—a patterned, faded thing that smelled as old as it looked—decompressing after a long evening.
Decorating the Main Street stoops was nothing less than a workout. About an hour in, my feet began to drag from the lack of caffeine. Luckily, Rhett joined somewhere along the way, providing the muscle while we gave him artistic direction.
Just as Georgie wanted, Bluebell Cove looked more like a painting than a real place when we finished. Each shop face boasted a display of colorful pumpkins situated on and around a bale of hay, some surrounded by autumnal flowers donatedby Janice and Frank, others flanked by galvanized pails bursting with dried wheat sheaves.
A truly idyllic subject for a luxury magazine spread.
I scowled at the blinking cursor on my laptop screen. Teddy had a knack for weaseling his way into my thoughts without even trying.
Kicking my feet up on the coffee table, I muttered to myself and glanced over both shoulders, as if one of the framed pictures on the wall might come alive to spy on me. Slowly, heart in my throat, I exited the blank document and reopened my manuscript—the one rejected by the same publishing firm that once hailed me as a wunderkind.
Sometimes I wondered if using my real name would’ve changed anything. Or if, had I been accepted, I’d still be sitting here in the ruins of my own life. Neither answer was satisfying.
My chest ached as I scrolled, devouring each word. So, maybe it wasn’t flashy. Maybe I should’ve known better than to submit it when I knew exactly what the trends were. Perhaps being called a prodigy had gone to my head. It was silly, I supposed, to believe I wasowedsomething for my unhappiness.
I thought I’d walked in lockstep and climbed the corporate ladder just far enough to finally allow myself to breathe. But the second I reached for something more, it all disintegrated.
Candice could call it self-sabotage, spiraling, or perfectionism—but the truth glared as bright as the words on my screen: when I reached for the stars, I plummeted.
Achieving dreams seemed only meant for people like Teddy and Georgie—the types born floating sixty thousand feet off the ground, their aspirations always an arm’s reach away. From down below, clinging to the cold, rickety rungs I’d spent years scaling just to get a glimpse, it all seemed so easy for them.
Here, wallowing in the ashes I’d made for myself, all I could think was that I wastired.
I snapped my laptop shut and ran my palm across its cool surface. I hadn’t felt this adrift since I was eighteen. Nothing was quite as unsettling as standing on shifting sand—a feeling I’d spent my whole life trying to outrun.
