She snatches my phone, quickly seeing what I was trying to hide. “You want to know?”
“No,” I lie again. I think I’m getting better at it.
Her eyes roll. Okay, maybe not.
She holds her phone toward me. His profile fills the screen. “Here.”
I hesitate, but she places it in my lap.
Ellie is still helping the band, but we don’t talk about it. It’s the elephant constantly in the corner of the room.
Unable to fight it, I pick it up and tap the circle. It’s a photo, zoomed in on a piece of notebook paper. Only one sentence is visible, one that empties the breath right out of me.
One day you’ll find someone you can’t leave behind, doesn’t matter cuz they’ll leave you anyway.
His handwriting is small and familiar. It feels like he just reached out and yanked on my heartstrings again. I didn’t know it was possible for your heart to hurt like this.
I’ve imagined his guitar strings tangled around the organ in my chest, pulling and strumming until it stops beating altogether. Even had dreams about it. I’ve woken up panting and sweating at images of a heart wrapped in strings so tight it bleeds and slows until eventually, it gives out.
In the dreams, I’m lying on an operating table, asleep or dead. But I’m also there, staring down at myself, my chest open. Sometimes, I reach down and try to untangle my heart from the strings. I pull at them, frantically trying to unravel them and stop the bleeding, but the more I yank, the tighter they become, eventually squeezing the life from me.
Those are the ones I wake up from screaming. The ones Ellie’s heard but never forces me to talk about.
The need to get out and drown my pain overwhelms me, along with simmering anger. How dare he write that? I know it’s about me, but I’m not leaving anymore. Not that he cares. He made it clear his only focus was the tour now.
“Where are we going?” I jump from the bed and grab some clean underwear from my drawer.
“We don’t?—”
I spin around and glare at her.
“There’s a frat party at Alpha Pi.”
I inwardly groan. I hate frat parties, and I know there’s a good chance Chad will be there. That thought doesn’t bother me as much now that I’ve said my peace to him. “Give me thirty minutes.”
I take a quick shower, skipping washing my hair and opting for dry shampoo once again. I stand in my closet, staring at myclothes. The weather is finally warming up. I could wear a skirt, but I decide against it. My skirts remind me of Penn now. How his face always lit up when he’d see me in them. How his fingers would slowly drift under the hem, teasing me until I was begging him to do more.
I shake my head, ridding him from my thoughts, and grab a pair of leather leggings, an oversized sweater, and black boots. Ellie puts my hair in a fishtail braid, and I paint my lashes with mascara, even glossing my lips for the first time in weeks.
We’ve beenat this party for over an hour, and I don’t feel any better. It’s loud and packed full of college kids celebrating the end of the year. They’re spilling out onto the front and back lawn, holding red Solo cups and joints. There’s beer pong downstairs, which reminded me of Penn, so I turned around and avoided it.
Ellie hasn’t left my side all night. We’re leaning up against a wall near the kitchen, people watching and sipping our drinks.
“Shit, Chad alert.” She tilts her head to the designated dance floor for the night. I scan the area. He’s not hard to miss with his light blond hair and dark skin. He’s dancing with a girl, but it doesn’t bother me in the slightest.
When the song ends, he spins around and spots me. He pushes through the crowd.
“Should we go?”
“No. It’s fine,” I say, taking a drink and preparing myself.
“Hey, Liv, Ellie. What are you girls doing here?” Chad asks, eyeing me cautiously as if I might reach out and bite him.
“We were invited,” I reply, even though I have no idea if that’s true. You don’t really get invited to parties here. You just know about them and show up.
“Right.” He looks at Ellie and then back to me. “Can we talk? Go outside, where it’s not so loud.”
“No, I’m good.” I said all I needed to say last time I saw him. I empty the rest of my drink and turn, making my way to the kitchen. I snag the bottle of half-empty rum resting on the counter.
