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His eyebrows drop low, picking up on it. “I can keep looking if you don’t think he’ll work—”
“No,” I interrupt. “He sounds great. But that’s all you were going to tell me? You don’t have any other news? Nothing life-changing happened to you today?”
Confusion clouds his face. “What do you mean?”
“I mean Nashville. The album. How they want you to write.”
He leans back and stares at me. “How do you know about that?”
I feel my cheeks heat despite the cold. “I came home early. You are a very loud phone talker. I swear I was going to come out and tell you I was there, but then I heard what you were talking about and…”
Mackenzie stands, then walks head down in a slow circle as his feet leave imprints in the snow. When he looks up, his face is devoid of any expression.
“I’m coming to Liverpool with you. Nothing has changed.”
My body rushes with such a strong wave of relief that it delays my ability to adequately process. “So what? They’re letting you write remotely?”
The hope expanding in my rib cage lasts for all of a second until the first slow shake of his head.
“No. I’ve decided to turn them down. It doesn’t really feel like the right move for now.”
What doesn’t feel right is the emotional seesaw happening inside me. I stand, needing exactly what he did a few seconds ago, to pace the roof for a moment and clear my head.
“But…” I whip around to face him. “All you’ve wanted since you came here is for someone to play your songs, and now you have a band with an album asking you to write, and you’re turning them down? Aren’t you giving up everything you’ve ever wanted?”
He steps toward me, his hands reaching for mine. “You are everything I’ve ever wanted. And yes, this is big. But that doesn’t mean something else big won’t come along down the road. I can live with that gamble. What I can’t live with is giving up on us. You and I are meant—”
“Don’t say it.” I rip my hands from his.
“What? Why not?”
“Because it isn’t true. We weren’t brought together by some magical force or written in the stars or meant to be anything, Mackenzie. We were just drugged.”
He narrows his eyes, understandably confused. “What are you talking about?”
“Harmony’s cookies,” I explain. “She’s been putting weed in them. She thought I knew about it. I didn’t. We’ve been under the influence this entire time.”
Mackenzie takes a step toward me. “Uh…okay. That is definitely something we should talk about more, but I don’t see how it has anything to do with us.”
I try to put into words all the thoughts that have been running through my head all day.
“The cookies and then your news helped me realize what I have known for a while. Why I avoided talking about what would happen to us when I moved to Liverpool.” I can hear the thickness in my voice. “What you’re feeling right now is a series of chemical reactions. It’s what happens at the start of a relationship. Your brain is flooded with dopamine, and it’s inhibiting your prefrontal cortex.”
He shakes his head. “I don’t understand.”
“It’s all going to wear off.” The truth feels harsh as I say it out loud. “If you come to Liverpool with me, you might feel great at first, but eventually, those chemicals will start to wane, and reality will set in. You will realize you gave up something big and then you’ll resent moving—you may even begin to resent me because I am at school all the time, or studying, or not as great as you once thought I was.”
“Annalise, you’re not—”
“And then you’ll leave me.”
Tears begin to rim my eyes.
“You will leave me, and I’ll be back to being alone, and I won’t be able to come back from it this time. I can’t do it again, Mackenzie. I can’t lose someone else. I don’t have anything left.”
I blink, and the tears fall. Like cascading raindrops, they coat my cheeks.
“I’m not going to leave you, Annalise.” He tries to cup my cheek, but I turn my head.
