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“I don’t know,” Aria mumbled and shifted her gaze out the window to watch the people milling about on the sidewalk in front of the gray building housing the bus station. “How much is enough?”
Shouldn’t the bus station be grander or have more buses waiting to whisk people away to a new life? The building was small and kind of depressing. Three long silver vehicles idled by numbered chutes that reminded her of cattle runs leading into a barn, but otherwise, there was little to indicate the purpose of this place.
“Depends on what you’re trying to do. Stay in a hotel for a few weeks? Rent an apartment? Go to Disneyland?”
Aria glanced over at her sister. All good questions that she didn’t have an answer to. “I have enough to buy a one-way bus ticket to Los Angeles and that’s the important part. I’ll figure out something when I get there.”
That’s what all the heroines did in her favorite books. They were smart, resourceful. They took on the world with no apologies and viewed each step as an opportunity. They did not abort the quest before taking step one.
Havana’s lips pursed and she could tell her sister wanted to say a whole bunch of things in response, but she didn’t. It must have taken an act of sheer will for her to keep her opinions to herself. They’d never picked up that discussion from the other day, the one that Isaiah had cut short. And Aria had no intention of hashing that out again anyway. What would be the use? To get an apology from Havana? That wouldn’t change anything.
“You can call me anytime if you need me to come get you,” Ha
vana finally said. “No matter where you are.”
“Really? What if I’m in Alaska?” she couldn’t help but retort. That was nowhere in her plans, but still.
Havana just turned up her hands. “Even then. You think distance makes a difference when my baby sister needs me?”
Yeah. She did think that because it made a huge difference, but Aria was the only one who seemed to understand that. “Distance is the whole point of this excursion.”
“Because you’re trying to escape me.” Havana’s mouth flattened. “I’m bossy and difficult. You can say it.”
“This is not about you.”
Except it was. It was one hundred percent about how everyone else in her life had gotten to go places and do things and hadn’t had one thought for how Aria would feel about being abandoned. How hard it was to be the one left behind. How that would become the defining phenomena that drove her decisions. Even after spelling that out, still Havana had said nothing.
And now Aria was the one doing the leaving. Finally. Was it supposed to hurt her this much though?
“Well, I’m not going to tell you what to do this time,” Havana said firmly though Aria would swear there was a glint in her sister’s eyes that meant she was trying not to cry. “You’re an adult and you can make your own decisions.”
“That wasn’t ever in question. And for the record, I’ve never minded you telling me what to do. What I minded was when you left.”
“Would it help if I said I was sorry?”
One tear finally worked its way down her sister’s face and that was nearly Aria’s undoing. Havana wasn’t a crier. She was a get things done kind of woman, the likes of which Aria had always admired.
“It helps.” But it didn’t change anything.
Aria was fixing herself once and for all. She opened the SUV door and forced herself to step onto the curb, then collect her bags. Because she was a masochist apparently, she turned for one final tremulous smile for her sister. “Tell Ember I said bye and that I’m grateful to her for taking over my job at Ruby’s.”
Havana nodded and the moment Aria shut the SUV’s door, her sister drove off, leaving her there with two pieces of luggage and the sinking sensation that she’d somehow messed up an opportunity to leave all of her old baggage full of the past behind.
But her sister wasn’t getting it, insisting on missing the point by laying blame for Aria’s troubles on something so meaningless as Havana’s tendency to be dictatorial. Who didn’t know that about the eldest Nixon sister? Havana had even said that Caleb loved her in spite of that flaw.
All at once, that conversation she’d had with Havana and Ember filtered into her mind, the one where Havana had said that Caleb let her be herself. And called it heaven on earth. Exactly how Aria had felt every moment she’d ever been with Isaiah—except for the ones where they argued about the future of their relationship with no compromise in sight.
But even then, he’d never once made her feel unloved. Or like he had no interest in working it out. He’d just asked for time to sort through the stuff in his head.
Well, guess what? She was giving him that time while she got out before being hurt again.
She bought a ticket for Los Angeles at the window and stoically climbed on board the bus at the appointed time. It was easily the lushest vehicle she’d ever been in with soft, posh seats, a rest for her feet and a cushion for her head that would come in handy since she’d have to sleep on the bus after transferring in Austin.
The trip to Austin took over an hour but it passed pretty quickly, probably because Aria had gone numb by the time the bus hit the freeway. For a grand adventure, it wasn’t turning out to be anything other than a lesson in misery. Mostly because she couldn’t stop thinking about Isaiah and how she’d put lines on his face that hadn’t been there before she’d told him she was leaving anyway.
She’d hurt him. And still he’d asked her to stay. Had told her in no uncertain terms that he wanted to be with her. Why couldn’t she just take that at face value? Wouldn’t staying be a better test of whether she’d become someone people didn’t leave? With each rotation of the tires, she grew less and less convinced that she’d made the right decision.
But this was the way it had to be. Wasn’t it?
