Of course, she had Meera to thank for convincing her to go there in the first place. Meera is a good friend; she really is. Talia doesn’t give her enough credit. She’s the only person Talia has ever considered telling why she really moved to Austin—but as much as she values theirfriendship, she can’t trust her with that. And unfortunately, it’s not something she can share with Townsend either. To tell him would be to risk losing him, because he simply wouldn’t understand.
Ever since the morning of Townsend’s birthday brunch with his mother at the Verano Country Club, Talia hasn’t stopped thinking about how things might have turned out for her, had she grown up with Townsend’s privileges: private schools, etiquette lessons, a trust fund created to broaden her horizons and cushion her fall. Sure, his parents didn’t seem like the warmest people, but they’d at least given him the assurance that only wealth can provide. Affection or affluence—if she could have experienced only one of these things in her formative years, she probably would have chosen the latter, to be honest. As it happened, she’d been given a family lacking in both love and funds.
While Townsend’s family was a caricature of old Texan money, hers was an embarrassingly perfect representation of proud, provincial proletarians living just above the poverty line. Her parents weren’t just uneducated—they were willfully ignorant, and they resented their bookish daughter for her ambition and dreams. Had she not met Malcolm Gray her junior year of high school, Talia wasn’t sure she ever would have made it to college. Then again, Malcolm was also the reason she was forced from Alabama altogether. So it was hard to say whether she should be grateful for him or—as she has chosen to do—resent him with a white-hot passion, even after all these years.
But she can’t waste time thinking about Malcolm now. Not with Amanda filling her inbox and taking a knife to her tires.
As they walk out of the police station together, Talia turns to Meera. “Hari has Grace this weekend, right?”
“Yup. He picked her up from school this afternoon.”
“Would you want to have a sleepover at my place? Townsend is having dinner tonight with Sage Clinic executives to talk more about a potential partnership, and I really don’t want to be alone right now.”
Meera considers this for a moment. “Can we get drunk?”
“Absolutely.”
“Then I’m in.”
They take an Uber across the river from Downtown Austin to Talia’s house in South Congress, a two-bedroom bungalow with vaulted ceilings, stainless steel appliances, and a sunny-yellow front door that makes her smile every time she pulls into the driveway. It isn’t much, but it’s hers, all hers, and no one can take that away from her. She almost wishes she could show it off to her parents, but she knows their reaction would only disappoint her—plus, she would have to tell them where she lives, which isn’t an option.
Talia gives her friend some comfy clothes to wear as pajamas (“I think this is supposed to be oversize,” Meera calls from the bathroom, “but it fits me like a baby tee”), and they settle on the living room couch with large glasses of red wine. Then they dance around the subject for a bit—discussing Gracie, Cuff, the approaching end of summer—before Meera asks what she’s likely been dying to know for hours.
“Tal, do you really think Amanda is trying to kill you?”
Honestly, Talia isn’t sure what she thinks; she was just as surprised when those words popped out of her mouth at the police station as Meera was. But when she said them, they felt right. Because even though Amandacouldjust be trying to scare her, the threat she posed seemed like more than that of a jealous ex. It seemed like that of ... well, someone deeply unwell. Maybe even deadly. “I do,” she says finally. “I really feel like I’m in danger right now.”
Meera nods, taking this in. “I think it’s impossible to say what she really wants or intends to do, but I’m just glad the police are involved.”
The hint of doubt she hears in Meera’s voice annoys her; isn’t she the one who keeps insisting that Talia take Amanda’s warnings seriously? But because she wants to have a good night tonight, she simply clinks her glass against Meera’s and says, “I’ll drink to that.”
It isn’t often that Talia has more than one drink in a sitting; there are few things she fears more than losing control. The stress of the day, however, has left her craving escape, and so one glass of wine turns into two and then into three. After a while, she isn’t even sure whether Meerais keeping up with her—all she knows is that the inexhaustible voice in the back of her head has been dulled, almost silenced, and she can finally let herself relax.
She hadn’t been planning on doing so, but by her third glass, Talia finds herself talking about her sister. She’s been on Talia’s mind recently, so it makes sense that—the minute she allowed her jaw to unclench—stories would come pouring out. Memories, blurred by time and pinot noir, but with pain and nostalgia still sharp as ever. She talks about the double-wide right off State Route 79 that they called home, and the shared bedroom where they traded books and secrets, and the playground down the street, where they would retreat whenever their dad returned from the butcher shop spoiling for a fight. She talks about coming home from school at fifteen to find her sister’s half of the closet empty, about learning that Chelsea had been sent away to a home for unwed mothers and wouldn’t be returning for months.
“Oh, my God, Talia,” Meera says. “I never realized you didn’t get a chance to say goodbye.”
Talia refills her wineglass. Is this her fourth glass or her fifth? “I never got to meet her baby either.”
“I know you don’t have a relationship with her now, but do you know if she’s okay? That maternity home must have been horrible.”
“I don’t know,” admits Talia. She tells Meera about all the letters she wrote Chelsea, each one returned from Neveah’s Oasis unopened. How alone she felt as she entered adolescence without a big sister to guide her. “Which is probably why I fell so hard for Malcolm.”
Though she hasn’t talked to Meera much about Chelsea, her friend is all too familiar with Malcolm, the promising football quarterback who, as a senior, saw something special in a mousy junior wearing secondhand jeans. Meera has heard all about Talia falling in love with Malcolm, losing her virginity to him in the back of his car, and eventually following him on a scholarship to Auburn, where he’d earned a full ride to play football. And Meera knows how he—like Chelsea—eventually shattered Talia’s heart.
“Do you think that’s why you’ve fallen so hard for Townsend too? Because of what happened with Chelsea?”
The room is spinning now. Clutching onto the couch doesn’t help, but Talia does it anyway, hoping to ground herself. “Probably. And it’s probably why I’m so afraid of losing him. Because I lose everybody.”
“Well, you’re never going to lose me. Remember that, okay?” Meera throws open her arms, offering a hug, and the unexpected movement stirs something in Talia. She thinks at first it is affection—but then her stomach is actually churning. She’s going to be sick.
Hand clasped over her mouth, Talia runs to the bathroom, barely making it to the toilet before depositing everything she ate and drank that day into the bowl. Once she’s finished, she sits back on her heels, feeling somehow cleansed. Almost good.
Washing her hands, she studies her face in the mirror above the sink. In her drunken state, it appears distorted and magnified, like a reflection she might see in a fun house: sunken eyes, thin lips, skin that looks drier and slacker than it had the day before. She stares for what feels like hours, so long her eyes cross and vision blurs. Then she reaches for a pen and the stack of sticky notes she keeps on the counter.
The idea came from theSpot of Positiviteapodcast. Whenever she becomes fixated on her appearance, Talia tries to write down positive affirmations and stick them to the mirror so she can see them alongside her reflection. The affirmations are supposed to be about things that aren’t necessarily physical (“You can use this exercise to remind yourself that you’re a good friend, or a hard worker, or a thoughtful partner!” the podcast host said), but now that Talia’s head is cloudy with wine, all she can think about is the physical, and nothing she can see is positive.
Flat chest,she writes on one sticky note.
