“I mean . . . I hesitate to say this, but those seem like reasonable responses.”
“Oh, totally,” she agrees. “But the conversation just ended there, every time. There wasn’t a What if we visit Portugal in the summer. There wasn’t even a Why do you suddenly want to move to Portugal?”
“Why did you?” I ask.
“I didn’t,” she says, like this should be obvious. “I just wanted to feel less . . . settled.”
I snort. “We should’ve traded lives.”
Ashleigh shakes her head. “There’s steadiness and dependability, and those are great. But settling? Just deciding you already know everything you like and dislike on the entire planet, everything you’re good at, every friend you’re going to make, and every food you’re ever going to eat? The guy wouldn’t even let me repaint our bedroom! I wanted to know new parts of him, and I wanted to find new parts of myself. So I asked him to go to couples’ counseling.”
“And it didn’t work?” I say.
She smiles, but somehow it’s the first flash of sadness I’ve seen on her. “For me it did. But he wouldn’t go. He was willing to be good to me, but he wasn’t willing to be any better. I stuck it out as long as I could. Then one day I woke up, and I couldn’t anymore. So I told him. And a part of me expected him to finally get it. To say he’d do therapy, try. But he didn’t.”
“Shit,” I say. “I’m so sorry, Ashleigh.”
She gives a blasé shrug. “Sometimes it’s terrible, but this was my choice. I think a lot of my friends thought I was a selfish idiot, giving up a pretty good thing just for the hope of a really good thing. But how can I teach my kid not to settle if I’m not willing to fight for the life I want? I tried so hard to love the one I had, and if Duke had tried too, I would’ve held on. But he’s just one of those guys who doesn’t believe in sharing his ‘business’ with a stranger, so therapy’s out.
“He didn’t even want me talking to our friends about it all, so when we separated, it seemed like it was out of nowhere. Everyone took his side, and honestly, even the ones who didn’t still stopped inviting me to things. It’s awkward to have one single person in a room full of couples, I guess.”
A weight sinks through me.
I think about my last conversation with Sadie: You both matter to us so much. It had hurt, to be lumped in with him. But what hurt worse was, I didn’t believe it.
If we both meant so much to her and Cooper, wouldn’t she have called me at some point in the last two and a half months? She didn’t want me anymore, not on my own.
“God.” Ashleigh shakes her head. “Maybe that’s why I’m so starved for gossip. I never felt like I could tell anyone what was going on with us. Damn, I think I’ve had a breakthrough, Vincent.”
“Not to mention, you know my whole last name now,” I say.
“See?” She takes another bite. “Official friends.”
OceanofPDF.com
16
TUESDAY, JUNE 25TH
53 DAYS UNTIL I CAN LEAVE
Miles is on his way out the door when I get home, a piece of toast clamped in his mouth and his keys, phone, and water bottle clutched in one hand.
“Running late?” I guess, holding the door open so he can slip out.
He nods, plucks the toast from between his lips. “Had to give Julia a ride. To a date.”
“She’s been here, like, three days,” I marvel.
“I know. Guess she met him at BARn.”
A few seconds tick by in which neither of us seems to have anything at all to say. It’s the first time we’ve been alone in the apartment together since Julia showed up.
I break first: “Anyway! I’ll let you go.”
“Right. See you later.” He turns to go but almost immediately does an about-face. “I forgot to mention, I can’t do this Sunday.”
“Oh.” I try not to look crestfallen. I try not to be crestfallen. It’s honestly probably for the best if we spend a little less time together. “No worries.”
“The thing is,” he begins.
“Miles, really, it’s fine,” I promise.
“No, I know, it’s just . . .” He pauses. “I’m committed to this thing Saturday night.”
I nod eagerly, like I’m not only personally invested in but also thrilled by his having plans.
“But I have two tickets,” he says. “So I was thinking maybe you’d want to go with me?”
“Oh,” I say.
I must take too long to go on, because a slight smile tugs at his mouth, his eyes sparking with humor. “There’s no pressure, Daphne,” he says. “If you don’t want to—”
“No,” I say. “It’s not that.”
It is exactly that.
“I just might have to get some work done,” I say.
The work being, not finding myself alone with Miles Nowak on a Saturday night and incapable of maintaining the friendly boundaries we’ve established.
“Sorry,” I force out. “Maybe next time.”
He nods. “Sure,” he says. “I’ll see you later.”
I nod too. “See you.”
He pops the toast back between his lips and disappears into the stairwell at the end of the hall.
I shut myself into the apartment and wait for the full-body regret to simmer down.
It’s for the best. I’m stuck here for at least fifty-three more days, and I’m not going to blow up my life again in that window.
I drop my bag and shuffle deeper into the apartment. Julia’s shoes are in the front hall, her clothes everywhere in the living room and bedding still wadded on the sofa. The bathroom counter is smeared with makeup, and she’s left two separate hair tools plugged in.
Minus the fire hazard, I don’t mind. As a kid, I was so jealous of my friends who had siblings. My best memories were all of movie nights with Mom or our long Saturday morning wanders through kitsch shops and record stores, but so much of my childhood was sitting in an otherwise empty apartment, longing for the kind of noise, clutter, permanence that comes from having a family, rather than just one overworked mother.
Julia might be a slob, but having her stuff everywhere makes the empty apartment feel a little less lonely.
I unplug her flat iron and clean up a bit, then take a shower and make some Easy Mac. While I eat, I email potential sponsors along with a few higher-profile authors we hosted back at the Richmond library to ask whether they could record videos to air as we meet our fundraising goals throughout the night. Then I check my phone calendar against the wall calendar. To my surprise, Miles has added his winery shifts in blue, and Julia (I presume) has added in scratchy red, across this Thursday: COMMIT MURDER.
Underneath it, I scribble as small as I can: Call FBI about Julia.
Then I get in bed and try to read, without any success. Then I try to watch an action movie and quickly realize it’s not fun to watch that sort of thing alone, so I take to scrolling social media, seeing college friends’ summer pregnancy announcements, a Richmond coworker’s recent trip to Thailand to see family, and then, without any warning, there she is, on my screen.
Petra.
And sure, that’s jarring enough. But it’s not what makes me fling my phone across the room, pulse racing.
It’s who posted the picture. It’s who else is in it.
The tiny woman with her, arms wrapped around Petra, both of them beaming in front of decimated plates of chocolate waffles on an orange-checked tablecloth.
