I exhaled through my nose, gaze dropping to my drink. “She deserves better than me. Always did.”
Josh raised an eyebrow, unconvinced. “If you really believe that, you’re more messed up than I thought.”
I stared at the ice melting in my glass, watching the waterline rise. “She might be the only woman I’ve ever loved, but if someone loves her in a better way than I ever could…I want her to have that. I want her to be happy. Even if it’s not with me.”
Josh didn’t say anything right away. He simply studied me as if trying to gauge how much of what I said was honest and how much was me trying to convince myself.
“You’re sure?” he asked eventually.
I opened my mouth to answer, but nothing came out at first. Instead, memories started crashing into me—Kira laughing at my terrible dance moves in the back of the diner, her curled up next to me during late-night closings, the way she used to look at me like I was her entire world. Moments that had felt small then but now returned with the weight of everything I’d lost.
One memory floated up from the depths of my first tender, awkward kiss with Kira, just outside the dugout after we’d won the annual kickball tournament. Looking back, it was sweaty, hot, and far from picture-perfect. But in that moment, it felt like everything.
The shards in my brain started to fix themselves, attaching themselves to one another with some kind of sticky tack. Yes, a plan was forming—hazy, undefined—but it wasn’t what Josh expected.
The only thing that truly mattered was Kira’s happiness. Fulfillment was everything to her. If I could be certain she was on that path, then I would do exactly what she wanted: disappear from her life for good.
If I made sure that Kira was happy and that she was on theroad to achieving everything she wanted, then I could let this all go.
“Hey,” I said, shifting gears as one of the lamps flashed a light in our direction. “Did you know I have bartending experience?”
3
KIRA
The Burrow Bitches
Britney: remind me, how long did you guys date?
Kira: Technically, four years. But we’d been best friends since we were kids.
Macey: Hello?
Kira: Second to Macey, of course.
Ariadne: What does Xavier think about Landon being back?
Kira: I haven’t told him yet.
Britney: …yikes
“Wait, you’ve been dating Xavier for four months,and you’ve only slept with him twice?” Britney asked, drink halfway to her lips.
She sounded horrified, like me keeping my legs closed was a dirty sin.
“Yes,” I said a little defensively. “We both have busy schedules.”
“And?” Britney challenged. “When I was sleeping with Michael from criminal law, we’d find a corner in the library beforeandafter our study sessions.”
I wished I could bury myself in a library corner right now. It was girls’ night—or, technically, girls’ evening. Macey hadn’t been back long, and this was the earliest time the four of us could get together.
Britney, the red-headed beauty who made heads turn everywhere she went, was just as smart as she was promiscuous. She worked as a barista at The Burrow Café—the café on the bottom floor of the same building where Ariadne and I worked—to help fund her way through law school.
Macey used to work in the building too, until she finally decided to follow her dreams of being an independent travel blogger. Now she owned and ran the blogMacey’s Miles, which was making her almost as famous as her semi-retired influencer boyfriend, Noah Hansley.
That left me and Ariadne working upstairs in the building. Even then, Ariadne worked part time as an IT assistant, solving a variety of problems created each day. In her free time, she was a freelance graphic designer. That came with its own set of challenges, namely that she worked from home—a small house overrun with her giant Greek family. How one fixed cosmetic flaws on Photoshop while listening to screaming two-year-olds, I’d never know.
“I don’t see a problem with it.” Macey rose to my defense. She tapped her iPhone, lighting up the lock screen photo ofNoah trying to use her long blonde braid as a mustache. “There’s no minimum amount of intercourse a couple has to have.”
