“Wait,” he said. “How could... How can you stay with him now, Livi?He falsified yourSoulmail?”
I covered my mouth with my free hand. My fingertips touched the wetness on my cheeks. “I already broke up with him,” I said from beneath my palm.
He let go of my hand, gripped my barstool, and spun me toward him. “You did what?”
“I ended things.”
“When?”
“Yesterday. Right before I quit my job.” I picked up my phone and did the only thing I could do: dial Wells.
As the rings ended in his voicemail message, my whole body trembled with adrenaline, with anger. “How dare you,” I said to his mailbox. “I just went into my archives folder. You aredespicable. You falsified my entire life. I don’t know how you did it. I don’t know how you could do it. I never even knew you.”
I tossed my phone on the counter. “I cannot believe this,” I murmured.
“Olivia. You really broke up with Wells already?”
Sometimes, when I looked at Caleb, I still felt like he was missing those glasses. His eyes were naked. This was one of those times. “You’re serious,” he added.
“Uh-huh,” I breathed.
The corners of his mouth tilted upward, deepened, then vanished. “What does this mean?”
“I’m not a wordsmith, but I’m pretty sure I can define myself as being single,” I said. “Pretty sure.”
He wrapped my ponytail in his fist and tugged so gently I might have broken. “You really split up with Wells?”
“I really did.”
“Even though you believed he was your soulmate?”
I licked my lips, suddenly desperate for ChapStick. I reached across the counter, snagged a bottle of olive oil, and dabbed a drop on my pinkie. I slicked it on my lips, his eyes traveling my motion. “Correct.”
“But you believe in all this.”
“I do.”
“Then why?”
I could explain that I was sick of living my life like that little entertainer. That now, my identity as my parents’ collective distraction had been stripped, and I was free. That my parents had tried to protect me, and I them, ever since Sabrina died. That I’d spent my childhood running alongside this now-man, trying to buoy my parents; that I’d spent my adulthood skating until I’d landed like a fish in a net made for sharks, entertaining the masses.
“Wells was important to me. Especially before he cheated on me. But even still, he didn’t feel like my soulmate,” I said finally. “Soulmail is this tsunami that’s been thrown at the world. And right before it came, instead of getting us to higher ground, Wells yanked any chance of stability away from me. I’ve spent my entire life doing things for other people. We only get one of these things, as far as I know. And I need to do right by me.”
“Yes,” he said. “You do.” Time ticked between us. “Once you open that,” he started, then swallowed. His brow pinched. “Ifyou open yours...” Caleb didn’t finish his sentence.
But he didn’t have to because it was there. Hope. It was a cracked window on that first spring day, a pinprick of light in the dark, a sun-warmed towel after bodysurfing.
I was in charge of my own destiny now. I didn’t have to open it.
“You already opened yours,” I said.
His head dipped, an acknowledgment. He thumbed my lower lip, an echo from the other night. I willed my eyes not to dilate. His hands smelled like my soap.
“I’d really like to not talk about anything else right now,” he said, not taking his eyes off my lips.
I didn’t answer him with words. I met his mouth with mine. His hands skimmed my jaw, the nape of my neck, the shell of my ear, before they trailed down my body. His knuckles scraped my breast, and the pressure knocked a sound loose from my throat.
Pressure might be the best and the worst of all things. It famously makes diamonds, causes arguments, bursts pipes. But right now, when I launched myself onto Caleb’s lap and wrapped myself around him, urgent, my hips found his, and that pressure made us whole.
