Page 83 of 32 Days in May

I look up from the paperback I’m trying—and failing—to read, my body wrung out and tossed over the love seat. I can’t get the letters to stop swimming across the page in a purple-green swirl. I keep blinking hard. That usually does the trick. Not today.

Even the early-morning sunbeam, the one I’ve loved since I was a child, hurts today.

When I lift my eyes, I find Marco standing in the long, dark hallway that leads to my parents’ bedroom holding up a gallon Ziploc bag.

My breathing stalls for a moment. My hearing dims.

The bag is filled with orange pill bottles, and they rattle as he lifts them.

I must have mindlessly left them out when I was looking for . . .

Looking for my medicine. Trying to make up for lost time.

Fucking idiot.

I push myself upright, letting the book fall from my hands. It hits the floor and slaps shut. “My migraine medicine.”

Marco looks between me and the bag, his expression unreadable. “How many migraines do you get?”

I grit my teeth, forcing myself upright and across the room to snag the bag out of his hands, maybe a little too forcefully. “To be a woman is to suffer.”

He takes this, both my cutting remark and the overly aggressive act, on the chin. But when my back is to him, he asks, “Why’d you cut your hair?”

I freeze, turning toward his voice. “What?”

“At dinner, Soph said something about your hair. Your mental-breakdown haircut or something.”

“Uh, yeah.” I shrug a shoulder, trying to still the storm brewing in my chest. “I just wanted a change.”

He’s not looking at me. He tangles a hand in his hair, a nervous habit. “That’s it?”

I nod. “I promise. I was ready for something new.”

He seemingly accepts this answer, this new half lie, with a nod. “I have to get going—I’ll see you later. By the way, you left your phone on the bed. You have about eight missed calls from your sister.”

“Oh . . . ” I’m almost knocked backward. I lower myself back down into my reading chair. He hasn’t accepted anything. Instead, I feel like he’s collecting evidence. The proverbial monkey’s paw curls a finger, and suddenly, our intimacy—this weird cosplay—feels like a weapon. I should say, Why were you looking at my phone? But I’m stunned silent.

“You should call her back,” he says simply, before pulling his car keys from his pockets and reaching for the front doorknob. He shifts from foot to foot, ready to leave, but I know if he leaves right now, it’s with something unsaid. Maybe he can hear my thoughts, feel the anxious thunder of my heart. Just fucking say it.

With a final, blank look back at me, he asks: “Did it bother you when I said you should be grateful for your life?”

Yes. “No. It was an emotional moment for you. I . . . I completely understand why.” I tighten my hand on the bag of bottles.

He drops his gaze from mine. “Look, I might have to go to LA for a few days. I got an invitation to be a part of this inaugural exhibit,” Marco says. “Which makes our situation even more complicated. I’d need to be there for at least a day, plus two days for travel, and I feel like a dick, since I just told you . . . to be grateful.”

I try making a joke. “I’ve been to LA before, it’s not anything worth—”

“I mean, we’re almost at the end here, Nadia. If I leave today, when I come back we’re over.”

His words hit me. Square in the chest. And I even make a small, injured noise from the impact. “What a way to put it.”

“It’s the truth, though, isn’t it? In a week, we’re breaking up.” There’s something in the way he says truth—breaking. Before I can get my bearings, he blurts out: “I want you to come to LA with me. I want you there with me. I need you there with me.”

“Marco,” I say slowly, carefully. “I can’t do that, you know that. I would love to, but I told you before—before we started dating and before Rome. My life . . . my job. It’s all here.”

He forces a breath out from between his lips, shoulders rounding forward. My words sink into him like a knife.

“Okay,” he says, dragging a hand back and forth over his chin, working at the skin, leaving a path of pink in his wake. Marco abandons leaving, temporarily; he steps over my discarded book and comes toward me, lowering himself down into a squat. Here, we’re at eye level. “Quit your job, then.” I don’t even need to hear the words—I can read it in his eyes, his features that hold in them a strength I can only dream of. I want you brims in them, dark and sweet and honest. “I’ll support you for now, that way you can travel. Evergreen can still be your home base. Just come to LA, and then we can figure it out.”