“That’s kind of the point.”
She stares at me.
I pull the blanket tighter around my lap even though I’m not cold. “If I stay here, I’ll keep looking for him everywhere. At the cafe. At the grocery store. Every time I have to pass Sparkks. Every Aston Martin will make me feel like I’m about to throw up. Every little girl laughing in public will make me think of Penelope.”
My voice catches on her name, but there are no tears. Not right now, at least. Just the crack in the wall where they might come through later.
Zoe’s face folds. “Oh, babe.”
I shake my head once, fast, because if she comforts me too gently, I will disintegrate all over her secondhand couch.“I can’t stay in Boulder and pretend I’m fine,” I say. “I can’t go back to Sparkks. I can’t be his nanny. I can’t be… whatever I was.”
For a second, I see Penelope’s pillow fort. Pizza sauce on her cheek. Grayson watching us from the other side of the couch with that soft look he always tried to hide.
Then I see him at the wedding, eyes hard, voice cold, deciding I was the kind of person who could fake everything.
“I just need to be away from it all.”
“You won’t be able to just nope out of that easily if you change your mind.”
“I know.”
“You could try to talk to him again,” she says, very carefully.
“No. He only talked to me because you all trapped us in a coffee shop and made it happen.”
Her mouth opens, then closes.
“I know you meant well,” I add, because I do. “I know Cole meant well. Maddox too. And he said the right things. He did. He was honest, and I’m glad he was, but…”
I stare at my hands. They look weirdly normal for hands that shook all night.
“But he only showed up because someone dragged him there.”
Zoe exhales.
“I needed him to choose it,” I say, and this time my voice is smaller. Worse. “Not because everyone told him to. I needed him to come after me because losing me mattered enough for him to move on his own.”
The apartment goes very still.
“He let me leave,” I whisper.
Zoe’s eyes shine, and she looks away for a second.I hate that. I hate making her sad. I hate all of this.
“He let me walk out,” I say. “And maybe that’s unfair. I told him I couldn’t do it, and maybe he was trying to respect that. I don’teven know anymore. I just know I needed something bigger than an apology we had to be cornered to produce.”
Zoe nods slowly, her throat working. “I understand.”
She says it like it costs her something.
“I hate it,” she adds, voice thick. “But I understand.”
I force a smile because if I don’t, I’ll do something worse, like ask her to tell me I’m wrong, or ask her to call him, or ask her to make one decision for me because every choice I make feels like stepping off a roof and hoping the ground is made of cotton.
“It’s just an interview,” I say.
Zoe nods again. “Right. Just an interview.”
I look back at the TV. The laughing woman is gone now. Some commercial plays instead, bright and loud and stupidly cheerful.
