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“What?”
“To get you to come with me. You’ve barely spoken to me for months, and you never answered me earlier…” I duck my head, too ashamed to meet her eyes. “I found a relative, and I talked to her on the phone today. That’s how I learned where Marie is. I wanted you to sit with me on the phone call. You were the only one I could ask, but you never answered and I had to do it alone.”
“I didn’t know it was something like that,” I say. The words are inadequate even to my own ears. “I thought you wanted to talk about what happened.”
“Oh.” Her voice takes on a hard edge that I don’t recognize and sure as hell don’t like. “So having an actual conversation about it would have been a step too far?” I open and close my mouth dumbly, searching for the right words to extinguish the fire in her eyes. Before I can, she’s pushing to her feet. “You know what? Never mind. I’ll drive myself. Don’t worry about it.”
Azalea begins to walk away, her shoulders hunched in defeat. It takes about three seconds of staring at her back for me to come to my senses. I jump up, ignoring the twinge of pain that shoots through my shin. “Zale. Azalea, wait.” She sighs loudly but stops to let me catch up. I stand in front of her, stooping down to get at her eye level. “I want to drive you.”
“It’s not a big deal—”
“Stop with that crap. It is, and I’m not leaving you to do it alone.”
“Well, that’s a change of heart.”
That biting tone is back. I close my eyes as I let out a breath, knowing that I deserve every ounce of resentment she’s holding onto. “I’m sorry.”
“That’s nice. I’d like an explanation, though.”
With a groan, I run my hands down my face. “God. I don’t know. I regretted everything I said to you the second you left my house, but you were so mad at me and it seemed better to just let you go, and then…it’s like I’ve been in this fog. I haven’t been drinking or anything, but I can barely remember this semester. All I do anymore is go to class and PT and do homework. And somehow, I still failed a class.” A flicker of sympathy crosses her face. I take it as a good sign and barrel forward. “Whenever you texted me, I’d get so fucking excited. But I didn’t usually reply because I was so far gone in my own head, I wound up convinced you’d be better off if I just stayed away.”
“I’m an adult,” she says. “I knew what I was doing, texting you. Iwantedyou to reply.”
“I know.” I shake my head, feeling truly lost. “I know you deserve a better explanation than this, but I don’t know what else to say. I’d been leaning so heavily on you. It started to seem like maybe you deserved to be free of me and my shit.”
“And what about me andmyshit?” she snaps at me, but her voice quakes, her hard demeanor beginning to crack and reveal the hurt underneath. “You thought you’d go wallow in yours and leave me alone to deal with it?”
“You have your dad. You have Callie, and I know Audrey came to visit—”
“I neededyou,Maverick!”
The tears start falling. I take a step forward on instinct, but she moves away from me, holding her hand up. I’m so used to being the one to comfort her; it’s strange to stand here while she puts distance between us, enduring her pain on her own.
“Callie and my dad don’t replace you in my life. You’re the one who knows more about me than anyone. Why would you think I’d be okay without you?” Azalea swipes at her face with the sleeve of her jacket. “I get that you’ve been through a lot. I get it. But can you please put yourself in my shoes for a second, Mav? You took me on a trip and kissed me and said all these sweet, amazing things about how you wanted to be with me. And then I had to watch youget hit by a carand you decided that was it for us. Is it really that hard to imagine that I’ve been having a hard time, too?”
With every word, the hurt I’ve caused becomes more apparent, and the weight in my chest grows heavier. I’m frozen, unsure how to make it better—worried that if I open my mouth I’ll make it worse—when she continues, “And the part I hate the most is, you have every right to hate me. This is my fault. I wasn’t paying any attention—”
“Stop, no. No.” It bursts out of me, and this time when I step into her, she doesn’t move away. Her feet stay rooted to the spot as she presses the heels of her hands into her eyes. “Azalea, baby, no. That’s not what this is about at all. I’m a fucking idiot who didn’t know how to handle everything that was happening. All of this has been about me not being able to deal with it. Not you. Not at all.”
There’s not a trace of venom left in her voice when she cries, “I hate that I did this to you.”
I grab her hands and pull her toward me, leaving no room for argument. I wind my arms around her shoulders, palming the back of her head to hold it against my chest. “Listen,” I murmur, the word lingering as steam in the air. “You didn’t do anything to me. That thing you said a minute ago about being an adult? I am, too. I made a choice. It sucks that it turned out like this, but I’d do it again. I’d do it for you every time.”
Azalea’s hands skate over my back, clutching at my jacket. “I know you would,” she says, voice muffled as I refuse to loosen my grip on her. “I know. But—”
“And everything you said before is completely true,” I interrupt. “I’ve been a selfish dumbass. Let me drive you on Saturday, Zale. I really want to.”
She sniffs. “Are you sure?”
“A hundred percent.”
The slow exhale she lets out sounds like relief. I let my hand twist in her hair as we stand together, rocking slightly, the only warmth in my body coming from the places where I’m pressed against her.
“Why did you send me flowers?” she asks softly.
I put my hand flat between her shoulder blades and rub in a slow circle. “I didn’t want you to think I forgot your birthday.”
Azalea presses her nose into my collarbone. “It was the worst birthday I’ve ever had,” she murmurs. “I missed you so much.”
