In the back seat, we were tired, stuffed, buzzy. My parents beamed; my best friend sang to every song on the playlist. My soulmate traced small circles on my ring finger knuckle, the one that used to house the ring he gave me.
I should feel guilty.
When we dropped off my parents, I promised to meet them for dinner the next day. When Natalie got out, I whispered to her that I was sleeping at Wells’s.
At my place, Wells moved to join me.
“I’m exhausted,” I told him. Which was the truth, but fleetingly, I wondered what it would be like to never see Wells again. My insides didn’t flinch. The thought was nearly a relief, which made guilt crash into me all over again. In the car earlier, I’d felt the hope of the promise of a life spent with all these people who loved me. But Caleb’s absence had shattered that contentment, shown me how precarious it was to rest your hope on the people you loved.
“I’m pretty tired, too,” he said, like he was feeling me out.
“It’s been a long day. I’m just going to crash, okay?”
He bit his lip, relenting. “I’ll walk you to the door.”
I thanked Trent; I blew a kiss to Dola. Wells put a hand on the small of my back, a place he knew I love being touched.
“Olivia,” he said at the door.
I stopped. “Yeah?”
“I know—” He caught my hand. “I know I screwed us up,” he said softly. “I want you to know I meant what I said on the Cape. I’ll wait for you until you’re ready. I’m betting on us.”
My eyes blurred. I blinked them twice to clear them. “I believe you.”
He crooked my chin, brushed my lips. “We’re you and me. I’m not a patient man, but I’ll become one.”
Our kiss failed to loosen the fishing line tangled in my chest. I stepped back. “Wells,” I said. “You’re not the only one who’s kept something awful from someone.”
He waited. The flinch that crossed his features made me lift my chin.
“Do you know that my parents have no idea I know that Sabrina didn’t die right away? AndIdon’t know iftheyknow. Both of those facts are true, but do they even matter? The outcome is the same. She’s still dead. We don’t talk about it.” I lowered my voice. “Why does no one talk about anything?”
On my way up, I waved to the on-call doorman I hadn’t seen before. In the elevator, guilt squeezed my sacrum, fire below the spot where Wells had led me to the door.
I will not do this. I will not do this.
Inside my lilac apartment, I stripped off my expensive gown. I washed my face twice, makeup staining my washcloth with browns and blacks and pinks, then plucked bobby pins from my hair. Every layer I shed relaxed me one iota, water levelsreceding after a flood. I put on a pair of yoga pants and my favorite sweater, spun from impossibly soft yarn, the one I like to cry in.
I will not do this.
But I did.
Thirty-Seven
At night, it was magic.
The main entrance was uplit, enormous. During the day, I passed the museum so often that it had lost its grandeur. It took up blocks and blocks of space, visitors winding around corners like roots in the ground. Caleb had mentioned that it was a total of twenty-six buildings right now, interconnected and growing.
“You doing one of those adult sleepovers?” the cab driver asked.
I halted with my hand on the door handle. We locked eyes in the rearview mirror. “Is that a choice I’m missing?”
“I drop people here at night for ’em. You have dinner, go on tours, and sleep under the big blue whale on a cot.”
“Right,” I said. Anything was possible in New York. Except one thing.
I thanked him and stepped onto the curb. Beneath the fabric of my sweater, goose bumps raced along my forearms.
