They learn to hate each other.
I’m pretty sure that they learn to hate me—even when they claim to love me.
Maybe what they have for me is worse than hate.It’s love with nowhere to go.
I tell myself I can live without them.
I can’t.
I tell myself I can pick one.
I won’t.
So I become a girl who survives on scraps—on texts that come too late at night, on half-apologies, on summers that feel shorter every year.On stolen moments when we manage to be friends again for ten minutes before it all collapses.
I live for the little time I can get with the two boys who taught me what it means to be seen.
And I hate myself for it.
Because I’m not just missing them.
I’m missing who I was before them.
Before I learned that love can be a wound you keep touching, just to prove it still hurts.
ChapterOne
Alberto
Conrad Pierce, my agent, calls three times in a row.
I miss the first call because I’m in the shower, water pounding my shoulders like it can rinse off dread.The second because I want to.Because I know what this is.The trade deadline is next week, and I’ve lived this movie enough times to recite the lines before anyone opens their mouth.
I miss the third because I’m standing in front of my closet, staring at suits I never wear and jerseys I don’t own, and thinking,I didn’t even make it a full season here.
Boston is supposed to be a legacy city.Original Six.History.Loyalty.
My apartment doesn’t care.
It still doesn’t feel like mine.I’ve been here long enough to learn which floorboards complain when you cross the living room.Long enough to know the neighbor’s dog barks at midnight like it’s paid hourly.Long enough to keep protein powder in a cabinet that smells like humidity and cheap wood.
The neighbor downstairs swears this building is haunted.Maybe it is, and that’s why it fits me.
I never make friends with anyone, not eventheghosts.Honestly, I never unpack all the way.
I keep my life in stacks that can be shoved into duffels fast.I keep my heart in my chest like a locked room, because I learned early on that “home” is a word people toss around like it’s permanent.
For me, it’s always been temporary, with a lease attached.
The phone rings again.
Fourth time.
I answer because I can’t outrun the inevitable forever.“Yeah.”
“Monty.”Conrad’s voice is controlled in that way agents train into themselves—like he’s speaking from inside a booth where nothing can touch him.“Where are you?”
“My apartment,” I say, because that’s the answer he needs.As if I might be in a bar.As if I might be doing something reckless.As if the worst thing I could do is look human.
