In a massive bus.
It sounded awful. When Leo and I traveled, he’d always rent a car so we could go off the beaten path. No crowded tours or cheesy stops—just us and Leo’s thoughtfully curated destinations. His favorite restaurants. Wineries that poured his favorite wines. Places he couldn’t wait to show me.
My heart cracked a little.
“I can’t deal with this right now,” I said.
“Luna, come on.” Exasperation was creeping into Ashley’s voice. “You can’t hide at home forever.”
“Watch me,” I muttered.
“Looney.” Ashley slipped into big-sister tone. “You’re miserable. Getting out of town, away from the fallout—it would help.”
But it was too much. My brain felt like an abandoned kitchen after serving up a huge meal—cluttered, sticky, greasy. I didn’t know where to even begin to clean it up.
“No,” I said, cutting her off. “I can’t, Ash. I just…I can’t.”
“Maybe I’ll go then, and you can come up here and take care of Mom for me.”
I knew she was bluffing. There was no way she’d leave the twins—Blakey and Maxwell, my seven-year-old nephews, who were incidentally my favorite kids in the world—and her devoted husband, Beckett, for… Did she say twelve days?
Besides that, Mom and I would kill each other if we were left alone for more than a day.
“I’m sorry. I can’t. Maybe one of Mom’s neighbors will take the ticket.” And then, before she could argue further, I added, “I’ll talk to you later,” and ended the call, tossing my phone onto the sofa and sinking down beside it.
A freaking bus?
Yeah, no thank you.
ADD A PINCH OF GUILT
Six years ago, Leo swept into my life like a whirlwind—sophisticated, charming, impossible to ignore. I was twenty-two, living in a tiny basement studio in Newport instead of a college dorm, trying to make a name for myself in the food world. I spent my days working part-time as a sous chef to gain experience, waitressing at night to cover rent, and filming videos for a little YouTube cooking channel I’d started mostly for fun.
Then Leo showed up—nine years older, intense, passionate, and newly hired as the restaurant’s head chef. When he said he’d seen one of my videos and actually seemed impressed, it felt like winning something I didn’t even know I’d been hoping for.
Like most people in the restaurant world, we were night owls by nature. After the last tables were cleared and the kitchen lights dimmed, we’d roam—poetry readings in town, late-night diners down winding back roads, live music in Providence, and sometimes even Boston, if we had enough time and caffeine. We watched more than one sunrise through the windows of eclectic cafés that felt like hidden worlds, always sitting close, holding hands.
Leo’s dreams seemed to match mine. It had felt...magical.
When he suggested moving in together at the six-month mark—and turning my little YouTube channel into something bigger than I’d ever dared to imagine—it felt romantic, like we were chasing fate.
My family disapproved, of course. But I believed Leo was the love of my life.
Now, I knew he obviously hadn’t felt the same.
The worst part wasn’t just losing him. It was losing the pieces of myself that had folded into his—grieving the life we’d imagined together.
What would it take to pull myself out of this? To scrape the burned bits off the bottom and move on? To stop feeling like my life was over because of one very public, very humiliating mistake?
I could still see it, still feel it, playing on a loop in my mind. The moment I’d destroyed everything. The show. My career. My reputation.
Gone. All of it, gone.
I hit the off button on the remote and then stared at my reflection in the blacked-out TV screen.
Pale. Messy. Pathetic.
The image brought me back to my sister’s advice. Not about being dragged around the southwestern United States on a bus with a bunch of strangers, but that I needed to get out.
