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Why haven’t you called me yet?

Pick up the phone!!!

Are you really on a weekend trip with Levi right now? While I’m having a complete breakdown?

I just want to know—why did you lie to me?

Has Levi mentioned me?

Deedee, please, I need to talk!

For a half a second, I considered calling her back, but she was always doing this—hijacking my life with her emergencies. I refused to let her take today away from me. I had my fellowship. I had Levi. I wanted to bask in my newfound favor with the universe for a little while. So I turned off my phone.

“Ready?” Levi asked, sliding his aviators on and opening the passenger door for me. I slipped down onto the reupholstered seats, taking a deep breath. I hadn’t been in this car for over a decade. She’d seen me through so many happy and devastatingly embarrassing moments. I closed my eyes, reliving them all at once, breathing in Levi.

As we took off down the tree-lined gravel path, Levi took my hand in his and held it against his thigh. I watched the villa grow smaller in the mirror and the road stretch out before us. It felt like a new beginning.

Chapter 27

Levi

There wasn’t any underwear decorating the floor of my apartment or plates piled up in the sink. Thank god.

I’d always been a stickler for cleanliness, but the past few weeks had been tough. I was stuck in a gray funk, and taking care of my place wasn’t high on my list of priorities. But since Indy had come back into my life, the edges of my world had softened into shades of pastel and now suddenly everything was in technicolor. The sky was bluer, the fall leaves a bacchanalia of reds and gold, and even the clouds seemed iridescent in their whiteness.

Whatever had been clouding my vision was falling away along with the numbness that had engulfed me. It’s not that I didn’t feel anything in all those years—I felt plenty of bad shit, the gnawing guilt, the yawning black abyss. Sometimes I’d just be walking along, minding my own business and it’d hit me so hard—all that I’d lost—that I’d double over, crouch down right there on the sidewalk while people moved to get out of my way. Little by little I got control of it: I put a smile on, tried to lose myself in random women, in my job. The only time I experienced anything approximating real happiness was when I was flying.

Even that didn’t compare to having Indy back in my life.

Admittedly, this was the absolute worst time for her to be near me, but I was going to do everything in my power to keep her safe. That is, if she still wanted to be near me once she knew it was all my fault.

For now though, she was here with me, moving around my space, boldly, like she belonged in it.

“That’s an interesting piece of . . . traditional art,” Indy said, nodding at an ugly still-life drawing of a weird vase and a plate of eggs that hung over the dining room table.

“You know, I don’t even notice it anymore,” I admitted. “This place is purely functional. The kitchen’s big and the bed’s comfortable. That’s all I care about.”

There wasn’t much in the way of decoration in my apartment. The place had come furnished, and to say that it was a little outdated would be an understatement. There was an oversized black leather sofa, a glass coffee table, a single bookcase with only a few books and some photos. Now that I was seeing the place through Indy’s eyes, I wondered why I hadn’t at least taken that ugly poster down. I guess this place never really felt like home. No place had since I’d left Colorado.

Indy walked to the bookshelf and picked up a picture of me and my mom that had been taken when I was ten years old. We were in her dance studio before a big competition. I was wearing my black trousers and white collared shirt, gel in my hair. She was in a black leotard and slim-fitting skirt, her blonde hair pulled back in a bun and we were both smiling at the camera like someone had told us the best joke ever.

“I remember this photo,” Indy said, tracing her finger over the glass frame.

“Yeah, I don’t have that many of her. I’ve left some others for safekeeping with my great-aunt in Michigan.”

“You look like her.” She smiled, and my heart warmed at the thought. At least part of my mom lived on through me.

I headed into the kitchen to see if I had anything in stock. I was hungry despite all the food I put away at brunch. Opening the fridge, I found a pack of beer, some milk that had probably gone bad by now, a dozen eggs, and as luck would have it, a jar of pickles.

“Why don’t I take you out for dinner to celebrate?” I suggested.

“It’s Sunday. There’s not that much open, right?” she said.

“Well, then”—I extracted the pickles from the fridge—“can I tempt you with these?”

“Ah! Get those out of my sight!” She held her hands over her eyes. “What else do you have in there?”

“Eggs and some beer.”