Page 69 of Smoke and Glitter

The disappointment hits first. I'm annoyed with myself for that almost immediately, because seeing his name made me expect something more before I'd even opened the message. Maybe he'd ask to see me. Maybe he'd say he'd been thinking about what happened. Maybe he'd finally have something to say that required more from him than four polite words.

Instead, he's asking about the tour.

I set my phone down, but I don't go back to the brief. A minute later I pick it up again and type:

I leave tomorrow.

I read it once.

Summer already told me she stopped by Vibes and made sure he knew I was leaving. He has the date. If he wants to see me before I go, he can ask me. I'm not going to keep handing him the beginning of a conversation and hoping he'll finish it.

I delete my message, then type a different reply.

Is that seriously all you have to say to me?

It's a fair question, and it's what I actually want to know. I want to know whether the last few months are eating at him the way they're eating at me. Whether he's sleeping badly. Whether he looks toward the door every time someone walks into Vibes. Whether he's replayed that night in his apartment and found the words he couldn't give me while I was standing there.

I want all of that. I just don't want to have to ask him for it too.

I delete my message and put my phone back on the desk.

When I turn back to the brief, I've lost my place. I start the paragraph over, make it halfway through and realize I'm still thinking about Sam's text, so I move my phone to the other end of the desk and make myself keep working.

It lasts maybe five minutes.

The worst part is that I miss him. I can be furious about what he said to Bex and still remember the look he gives me when he catches me stealing something off his plate. I can know walking out of his apartment was the right thing to do and still miss waking up in his bed. I can hate that he called us casual and wonder whether he reached across the mattress last night before remembering I wasn't there.

Work usually helps because it's a distraction that doesn't care how I feel. Somebody gives me a problem, I find the part that's broken and deal with it. There is always a next call, another decision, some version of the story that can be made clearer.

There is no useful next step with Sam. I already went back after hearing him tell Bex we weren't serious. I gave him the chance to tell me something different when he knew I was listening. I asked what we were, told him what I wanted and asked if he wanted me.

Maybe I should've done it sooner, hindsight and all that.

I spent months making sure Sam knew I had my own life, then quietly made choices with him in the middle and never told him. That part is mine. I don't know yet what to do with the fact that it doesn't change what happened when I finally asked.

I pull the brief back up and find my place.

My phone stays quiet.

Lucia is already halfway out of the diner booth when she sees me the next afternoon.

Marisol catches her juice before Lucia's knee takes it with her, and I barely get my bag off my shoulder before two small arms lock around my waist.

"Hi to you too."

"Autumn, London is far." Lucia whines with her face pressed against me.

"So I've heard."

She pulls back. "Farther than the zoo."

"A lot farther."

Lucia looks at her mother as though this confirms a serious lapse in my judgment.

Marisol slides over to make room. "We've spent most of the afternoon establishing that the zoo is basically another country."

"You can't drive to London," Lucia tells me.