By the time they’re on the road to San Diego, the sun is setting, I’m weary from their passive-aggressive remarks, and I’m itching to get out of the house. I don’t know why I expected them to have a better reaction to my book deal, but their surprised and skeptical faces when I broke the news kind of crushed me. All I want to do now is celebrate with West. I text him to meet me at the house and then change into a white off-the-shoulder dress that I’ve been saving for a special occasion. I’m sitting cross-legged on the bathroom counter, touching up my curls, when I hear a knock on the front door.
“Come in!” I shout, and a few seconds later, West’s face appears in the mirror.
“Whoa,” he says, his eyes traveling over the stack of boxes pushed into the corner of my room.
“Weird, right? How’d packing go at your place?”
“I don’t have much stuff.”
“I mean, same, if you don’t count the books. My parents took four boxes home with them.” I release the last curl, run my fingers through my hair, and spritz everything with hair spray. “Sorry my parents stayed forever, but you could have come over sooner.”
He leans against the doorjamb with his arms crossed and watches me reapply my makeup in the mirror. “You don’t get to spend much time with them.”
“Thankfully. I only need five more minutes and then I’ll be ready. What should we do? Dinner to celebrate? Can youbelievewe’re finally leaving?”
“Dinner sounds good.” He stuffs his hands in his pockets asI attempt winged eyeliner with my nose two inches from the mirror.
“And then Rishi is having a grad party, if you want to go?” My hand slips, and my right eye wings out way too far. I run a Q-tip under the tap and fix it.
“Eh,” West replies. “I didn’t graduate. Might be weird.”
“What? No. These are your friends, too. I’m on the fence. It’d be fun to say goodbye to everyone, but we’ll probably get on the road faster if I’m not majorly hungover in the morning. Did we decide if we’re leaving tomorrow or the next day? We get the keys to our apartment on Wednesday, so it just depends on how we want to split up the driving, where we want to stop for the night.” I swipe on a matte red lipstick and lean back to survey my face. The eyeliner is still uneven, but whatever.I’m going to be a published author!Who cares what my makeup looks like?
I knock over an open bottle of foundation as I’m climbing off the counter, and I meet West’s wary expression in the mirror. “Oops.” I quickly wipe it up with cotton balls. The counter is covered in makeup and hair stuff, and West looks thoroughly unimpressed. “I’ll be cleaner when we share a bathroom.” West is cleaner than I am—this has always been obvious by the state of our bedrooms—and I don’t want to get off on the wrong foot when we move in together.
He steps out of the way to let me pass. In my empty room, I slip on a pair of comfy sandals. “When we live together, I’ll be different. I’ll do my dishes and take out trash and whatever else clean people do—” The corners of West’s mouth are turned down, his brow furrowed. “What’s wrong?”
He swallows heavily. A prickling sense of foreboding settlesover me as I watch his throat work. I step toward him, faltering when his body tenses.
“I can’t go to New York.”
“Tomorrow? That’s okay. We can leave Sunday.”
“No, Mars.” His voice is rough enough to bruise. “I’m not moving to New York.”
I blink, convinced I heard him wrong. “That’s not funny, West.”
He presses his lips together, waiting for something. For me to understand what’s happening, maybe? I glance at the open door over his shoulder, looking for—I don’t know what. Someone to tell me why he’s saying this. But the hall is empty, and it’s just him and me, and he’s looking at me with puppy dog eyes that are begging me not to hate him.
Panic builds in my throat until I’m halfway to asphyxiation. “What are you talking about? We found a place. You’re myroommate.” Yes, that’s good. Focus on that. Losing a roommate is a lot fucking easier than losing the love of my life.
He stares at the floor. “You won’t have trouble making rent.”
My breath is tight in my chest.Oh my god. He’s jealous. “Is this about my book deal?”
“No,” he says with blistering force. “I shouldn’t have said that. I didn’t mean it. This has nothing to do with you.”
“Then I can’t wait to hear the reason.”
“My family needs me. My grandma is getting worse by the day. My mom can’t take care of her and all the kids.”
“You’re moving back home?”
“Maybe.” He sighs heavily. “I don’t know yet.”
If this were entirely about his family, we would have talked about it before now. There’s something else going on; hiswords don’t match the tragic look in his eyes. “Is this about Bethany?”
“No.” He steps toward me, but I duck around him and out of my room, mind reeling.
