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“You’re right.”

Wyatt looks at me.

“Should’ve stayed out of it. Not gotten involved.” I look away. Joel. Lance. The bar. Half the town crammed in this room. “Doesn’t matter. Never belonged here in the first place.”

“What does that mean?” asks Wyatt.

“Got a text just before I left work.” I look at him. “House sold.”

The words shut up whatever else he was about to say.

I nod at him. “I’ll be outta your hair by morning.”

—29—

Wyatt

Then Diego leaves.

In the silence of his words, he just leaves.

What else would he do?

And what could I possibly say to stop him?

Do I want to stop him?

Creak of the door opening, the shuffling of feet, and the door softly clicking shut behind him.

People start talking again. Jukebox carries into its next song.

A hand on my shoulder. Joel says something soothing. Lance, too. I just stare at the door and keep repeating the last words he said over and over in my head.

I’m so confused, I don’t know whether to be hurt, cry, or red-faced and fumingly angry.

Or sorry.

Or none of those things at all.

“I’m sorry, Mr. C,” says Cash sometime later.

He’s sitting next to me at a booth. I didn’t even know he was here. I don’t know when I sat down at a booth either. I vaguely remember Lance saying he was ordering me some food and never came back. I’ve gone back and forth a hundred times on whether or not to rush home, march over next door, and demand another conversation.

But what’s the point? He’s leaving.

I think he always wanted to.

Regardless of whether he got his father’s car up and running again, Diego always had one foot out the door. He told me that the second we met. Shouldn’t I have believed him then?

I’ve been foolish to think, even for a second, that he’d want to stick around. That I’d magically change the mind of a guy like that. How arrogant of me, how delusional, to think I’d be enough reason for him to stay.

It’s not like we’re in love. I apparently made that quite clear when I told him we’re not boyfriends, didn’t I?

Idiot.

“If it makes you feel any better,” Cash tells me, “I don’t think Nico and I are friends anymore.”

“That … does not make me feel better,” I mutter tiredly.