He gets to his feet. He puts the box in his jacket pocket. He looks at me for a long moment.
"Everything or nothing," he says. "I won't do this any other way."
"Are you saying that either I marry you before college or you're breaking up with me?"
He just stares at me and crosses his arms. There's something broken in his gaze and I want to reach out to him, but my entire body is frozen in place.
He can't be serious. But he is. He's giving me an ultimatum.
"I'm sorry." My voice breaks on the last syllable. "Don't do this, Dem."
He inhales deeply, like he's trying to take in enough oxygen all at once so he doesn't have to take another breath for the rest of his life.
"Goodbye, Madison."
Then he walks back down the pier and the ABBA song is still playing and people in the crowd are pointing at me. Then slowly, they move on, understanding that the show is over.
I sit there in the blue dress while the August light goes golden around me.
Dancing Queen. Of all the songs to break up to.
Jazz pulls me out of my memories by reaching across the table and pinching my forearm. Hard.
"Ouch!"
"But that was then, Maddie," Jazz says. "This is now."
"I know I should let it go." I've carried this pain so long the ache has gone numb, the way a bruise does when you've pressed it too many times. "I just wish we'd talked it out, back then. Get closure and all that. But it's too late now."
The mixer in the back kicks on and rattles.
Jazz is watching me with the expression that sits between "I love you" and "I'm very worried about you."
"He's not that boy anymore," she says.
"I know that."
"That's what I'm saying." She leans forward. "The Demetrius Thornwood you were in love with doesn't exist anymore. The man who hired you to take care of his grandmother is not the same boy who carried his heart on his sleeve for you back in high school. He's a billionaire, used to using people and getting what he wants from them." She holds my gaze. "Men like that own things, Maddie. They own people, too."
The chair scrapes slightly under me as I shift.
"I'm not saying he's a bad person." Jazz picks up her coffee. "I'm saying I watched what it did to you when he left. And I don't want to watch that again. So do your job, cash your check and move on when this is over. Don't let your heart get run over by some asshole with a Rolls-Royce."
I open my mouth to tell her she's wrong. To tell her she's also right and that I don't even know myself anymore around him.
My phone rings. We both look at it on the table. Saved by the bell, I guess.
"Sorry," I say, and pick it up. "Hey, Dad."
"Maddie." His voice is different. I know every register my father has and this one is a version I haven't heard in a long time, somewhere between stunned and lit up from the inside. "You're not going to believe this."
I sit forward in my chair. "What happened?"
"The piers project." A pause, like he's still working out if it's real. "It's back on, the funding came through and the mayor called me himself to ask if I could accelerate the timeline. Not just back on, it's bigger, better. Full project, plus the north end extension that was shelved thirty years ago. The Thornwood family made a donation to honor the memory of Cornelius Thornwood. I'm calling the boys back to work tomorrow." His voice does something that makes my throat tighten. "We're saved."
I laugh before I can stop it, the real kind, nothing performative in it.
"Dad, this is really great." It's all I say. My throat is already tightening.
