“Hope, I guess. Stupid hope that someday you might come back.” I paused, then added, “I also kept all your stuff. After you told your landlord to send everything to charity, I convinced him to let me take over the lease instead. Kept everything exactly how you left it.”
“You what?” Her voice was barely a whisper.
“I know how that sounds. But I couldn’t let him get rid of your things. The books you’d arranged by height, the throw pillows, even...” I stopped myself before mentioning the broken vase I’d saved. “Everything’s still there.”
“That’s...” She was quiet for a moment. “That’s really sweet. And financially irresponsible. And maybe a little concerning.”
“I’d call it dedicated. Maybe a little obsessed.” I gave her a small smile. “But worth every penny.”
There was a long pause.
“There’s something I want to show you. Can you come over? Not for anything romantic,” she added quickly. “I just want to have a conversation.”
Twenty minutes later, I was standing in her new living room, surrounded by boxes and the smell of fresh paint. My chest tightened the moment I saw her. After over a year apart, she was here, back in Millfield finally.
“Coffee?” she offered.
“Please.”
As she busied herself in the kitchen, I looked around at the space she’d created. It was distinctly hers-clean lines, warm colors, new books everywhere. But there was something missing that I couldn’t quite identify.
“No photos,” I said suddenly.
“What?”
“Of us. There are no photos of us anywhere.”
She handed me a mug and settled onto her couch. “Are you surprised? Couldn’t bear to look at them.”
“But you still have them?”
“Some of them.” She looked away. “The night I left, I smashed a few at my apartment. I was...” She shook her head.
I remembered finding the broken glass on her floor, along ceramic shards from the vase scattered near her kitchen counter. And before that, the photo she’d hurled against my bedroom wall—the two of us at the charity ride, both smiling, my arm around her waist. Glass everywhere, the frame destroyed, our frozen smiles lying amid the shards.
“I remember,” I said quietly.
“The ones that survived...” She met my eyes again. “I’m not sure what they represent.” She set down her coffee and looked at me directly. “I heard something interesting about you.”
“What?”
“Glitch sent me this.” She pulled out her phone and turned the screen toward me.
I watched myself drag a mattress across the clubhouse parking lot, douse it in lighter fluid, and set it ablaze while my confused brothers looked on.
I felt heat rise in my face. “Glitch needs to mind his own business.”
“He cares about you. They all do, even when they think you’re making mistakes.” She set the phone down. “You told me about this. But seeing it...”
“It hits different?”
“Very different.” She studied my face. “You also mentioned giving up your room at the clubhouse. Moving to your house permanently.”
“Don’t want that lifestyle.”
“Lifestyle?”
“Before you, I had a room at the clubhouse for one reason—easy access to women. Club girls, hangarounds, whoever wanted a night with the president.” I shook my head. “When we got together, I told myself I’d changed, moved into the house, but I kept the room.”
