I swallow. “Can you find me something back home?”
“In Brno?” Shay starts, incredulous. “I mean, there’s probably some European league teams we could see about—”
“No. In Canada. Preferably Toronto.”
She’s silent again. The options aren’t endless.
“I honestly don’t really care what it is, Shay.” I don’t.
She waits again, seemingly weighing her next words, like she’s trying to squash any bit of hope she might have for me in case it’s not really real. “Does this mean—are you two back together?”
“No.”
And we probably never will be. Sloan deserves more.
But I’m selfish and stupid and I feel like sacrificing something the way she always sacrificed for me so that she knows, without a doubt, when she steps off the ship, that she was always enough.
It was me who wasn’t.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Shay says softly before she hangs up.
I watch Sloan for a minute longer, and the sunlight crests over the rough, crumbling rooftop of the Colosseum entrance, shining down on her.
A bright spotlight, painting pictures across her beautiful, perfect skin. But I can see it—marks I left and the way I littered her whole being with the ruins of our relationship. All over her, just like she said.
I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to erase them, but I’ll see what I can do over the next few days, too.
Sloan
Then - Seattle
“You gave me a note on herbal remedies for headaches commonly used in traditional Middle Eastern medicine instead of your proposal brief.”
It takes me a second—I look up from my computer, frowning with a slow blink.
Dr. Amore slides into the chair across from me, resting her elbows on top of her canvas tote. She folds her hands, interlaced fingers propping up her chin as she smiles patiently at me.
“Pardon me?” I blink again, eyes tracking across the busy campus café, unable to focus on one thing because I’ve been reading about the efficacy of minimally invasive neurology procedures to treat migraines.
“You gave me a note on herbal remedies for headaches commonly used in traditional Middle Eastern medicine instead of your proposal brief,” she repeats, words calm and soft.
She’d be great at telling bedtime stories—it’s exactly the kind of voice that would lull a child to sleep.
But it sends a warning signal to my nervous system, and my heart speeds up in my chest. I blink again, too much now, and my lungs do this funny thing where they expand, but I don’t think any air comes in.
“I didn’t mean to.” My voice cracks, and my hands fumble to close my computer as quickly as possible so she can’t see more evidence written across my screen—all the ways I’m failing at being a graduate student.
She sighs, features pinching before she purses her lips. Not in a harsh way, but like she’s chewing something over. “How’s Bohdan, Sloan?”
“Fine,” I lie, sitting up and folding my own hands across my laptop in a sorry imitation of Dr. Amore. My fingers don’t lie still like hers. They start tapping out counts of three before I can stop them.
One brow rises, breaking right through the falsehood. “And how are you?”
“I have my proposal right here.” I dodge the question like it’s a bullet, and it is—at least a metaphorical one. My tapping draws attention to the laptop. My proposalisin there, a dusty virtual folder that hardly gets touched anymore. It’s not very good—probably the worst thing I’ve ever produced in my entire academic career—because I can’t be bothered to do anything other than search for something that might fix Bohdan.
“That’s not what I asked.” She tilts her head, wisps of hair framing her face. “I asked how you’re doing.”
“I’m just tired,” I whisper, scrunching my nose. “Bohdan’s been having trouble sleeping.”
