He doesn’t deny it. Doesn’t tell me it’ll all work out fine. He just sighs, passing me the final cigarette. “I’m sorry. That fucking sucks.”
“It does.”
“The girls?”
“They’re good. They’re all stronger than I am. I don’t know how they stay so positive all the time.”
“Kids are crazy. Shit just bounces off them.” He reaches behind him for his seat belt. “There’s a kebab van near Ullapool that does thegreasiestburgers. You wanna go?”
A greasy burger does sound good, and I haven’t eaten anything all day. I hand him my phone to plug it into the GPS. “Sure.”
I pull out of Sorrowsong’s black iron gates for the second time this afternoon, marveling at how my mood plummeted from hopeful to completely lost in the space of two hours. I have no one to blame but myself.
A low fog is seeping across the landscape, clouding my already addled mind. After fifteen minutes of silence, I’m sick of Vincenzo’s loaded inhales. “Just say it.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“I think you’re being a complete fucking fool, and I want to bash your face in.”
The engine purrs as we climb a hill against a sheet of rain. “Great.”
“Youloveher.”
“And she has asked me, respectfully, to remove myself from her life so that she can move on.”
“She doesn’t mean it.”
I spare a glance at him while I drive us through a flooded road. I don’t like his tone when talking about her, like she’s a fool. “Are you suggesting she doesn’t know what’s best for herself?”
He throws up a tattooed hand in frustration. “That’sexactlywhat I’m suggesting. Neither of you knows what’s good for you. You’re both drowning in emotions and shit. But I’m an outsider with a better view, and I’m telling you,categorically, that walking away is the incorrect choice, and probably an irreversible one.”
“And I’m telling you that not walking away would be me completely disrespecting her wishes.”
He growls into his hands like I’m driving him up the wall. “You don’t give up anywhere else. You practically stalked your mom’s doctors until they agreed not to give up on helping her last year. You moved across the Atlantic when you thought it might help you take Green from your dad. When I thought I was gonna die when we hiked Mount Suilven before Christmas, you dragged me up it. And now you’re turning away from Ophelia at the first obstacle.”
My laugh is hollow, devoid of humor. “That’s what you’d call this? An obstacle?”
“Yeah. In ten years, you’ll look back and see it that way.”
“My father letting her parents die is not an obstacle, Vincenzo. It’s a concrete wall.”
“Youletting her parents die would be an obstacle. You are not your father.”
It doesn’t feel that way lately.
“Look … it’s the Sorrowsong Winter Ball the day after tomorrow.”
Panic slices through me, the gash it leaves behind stained green with envy. “Is she bringing someone?”
“Yeah, you dick. Me.”
“What the fuck?”
“I’m gonna ask her so some other guy doesn’t! She attracts attention, you know?”
I grip the steering wheel until my knuckles are the same shade as the snow-topped mountains that come into view. “I know.”
