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And then there’s the smile.

The crooked one. Higher on the right side than the left. I haven’t seen Grayson in two years, and I have not stopped seeing his smile every time I close my eyes since. I have written half my discography trying to describe it and never gotten it right.

I’ve travelled the world, been in rooms with the rich and famous, but Grayson Douglas is still the most beautiful person I have ever seen.

I scoff, zooming into the photo. Grayson is the same man he was in high school. The same boy he was before that, and the exact same person he was the last time we saw each other…

When he broke my heart.

“Now boarding, Amtrak Downeaster service to Freeport, Brunswick, and points north,” the female announcer muffles over the speaker. “Track twelve. Final boarding in five minutes.”

Freeport is only forty minutes away from home. I could be on that train in five minutes. I could be in Maine by morning. I could be in Iris’s kitchen by lunch, wrapped in one of her ratty bathrobes, eating a cannoli with my name on it, listening to her talk about absolutely nothing while she rolls out dough and pretends she isn’t crying that I came home. I could be back with Grandma Mary and Bud in my childhood home. I could take my own sweet time; all I would have to do is turn off my phone and not open my laptop. They wouldn’t be able to find me, and for a week or two, I could be free.

Best of all, despite everything, I could see Grayson.

My phone buzzes in my hand, and I see a message from Nicki.

NICKI: Updated itinerary. The car will pick you up from the hotel at 8:00. JFK to DUB, departs 11:00. We’ll talk on the plane. Get some sleep, baby. Love you.

I stare at the screen. Love you. Love you? She has signed every text she sent me since I was nineteen years old with ‘love you’, and I don’t think I’ve ever once believed she meant it.

I look up, and before I can talk myself out of it, I turn off my phone and run. Well, not really, but I move as fast as my ankle will let me, half-jogging, half-limping back through the revolving door, back into the bright warmth of the station, ankle screaming, the duffel slapping against my hip. The board is blinking. Four minutes. The ticket window is open, one tired woman behind the glass, eyes glazed, hand on her chin.

“Freeport,” I say, breathless. “One way. Please.”

Because now that I’ve let home back in, I know that’s where I need to be.

3

GRAYSON

“We’ll get your buggy back to you by next week, Miss Franklin,” I say, ripping her receipt off the printer and shoving it across the counter.

Miss Franklin. Mother of some kid I vaguely remember from JV football. Town legend for taking more virginities than the fucking tooth fairy has taken teeth. She has to be pushing sixty, maybe even seventy by now, but that hasn’t slowed her down. She is wearing a leopard-print top cut down to her navel and a pair of jeans she probably stole from her twenty-year-old granddaughter. Miss Franklin’s eyes run across my body, and she drags her tongue across her ruby red lipstick slowly enough that I forcibly make eye contact with her so she’ll stop.

“You better, Gray,” she says, sliding one acrylic-tipped finger along my palm as she takes the receipt. “I’m trusting you with my baby.”

The fake nail scratches my skin. Christ.

I pull my hand back before she can do anything else with it and force my mouth into something that probably looks more like a grimace than a smile. “I’ll be gentle.”

“I bet you will,” she purrs.

I’m too tired for this. I only came down to help old man Bud since Dominic and he are the only two full-time mechanics in a hundred-mile radius. They used to have Eddy, but he ran off with some girl he knocked up a few months ago, and nobody’s really heard from him since. And besides, I like the distraction of working on cars. I have since high school. There is something honest about an engine. It either runs or it doesn’t. The problem is right there in front of you, greasy and visible, and when you fix it, it stays fixed. You don’t have to fix the same fucking thing twice in one day because the engine already knows you did it.

That isn’t a thing I have the luxury of saying about my father.

I haven’t been down at the shop in months because of him, and because of the company, which is the same thing now. My father has been getting worse, and he doesn’t want anyone to know about it. So, I’m out there ghosting as the new CEO of Douglas Corp while he works up the nerve to actually hand it over.

So yeah. I can’t get the grease from under my nails. I smell like burnt rubber and diesel. The work is grueling and my body strains with every breath, but it’s better than anything else right now. I can deal with Miss Franklin leaning her tits on my counter like she has paid for a private show and not getting a hint. It’s better than what I have to deal with on Monday morning.

“Have a good one,” I say flatly, already turning toward the bay.

I push through the swinging door into the back room, whistling as I wave the receipt book in my hand. Dominic, my best friend from college who followed me back here for a gap year, lays underneath a black 1970 Dodge Charger R/T, with the exact same care Dominic Toretto has in Fast and the Furious. Dominic has been restoring this thing for the better part of two years now, sinking every spare paycheck and every spare hour into it, and most days I’m convinced he loves it more than any woman he has ever dated, which, knowing Dominic, is a long list, and probably true.

“Yo, got a pink buggy in the front with some engine issues,” I call out, hitting the hood of the car.

“Ah, yes, Miss Franklin,” Dominic calls out from under the car, not even looking up. “Is she still trying to fuck you?”