“I’m not mad at Felix,” Benji said softly.
“Mad at me?” I asked, twirling one of his curls around my finger.
He shook his head. “Just sad.”
“I know,” I said, and then, softer, “me too.”
I gave Benji a few beats to ask any more questions, then straightened up and reached for the box of books I kept by his bed. “Wanna pick a story?”
That earned me a smile. He picked one he’d heard probably forty times, and I got lost in the familiar rhythm of words I could have recited without looking at the page at all. By the time he dropped off, I was about ready to fall asleep, too.
If Dad hadn’t appeared in the doorway, I might’ve slept on Benji’s floor. Wouldn’t have been the first time.
Instead, I got up and followed him into the kitchen. Mom wasn’t around, which I realized was intentional when he opened the fridge, grabbed two beers, and offered me one.
I took it without arguing, perching on one of the breakfast bar stools.
The one Felix had sat at when he’d come over for dinner, as it happened.
Dad cracked his beer open, leaned his elbows on the counter, and took a sip.
“Wanna talk about it?”
I huffed, twisting open my own beer. “That obvious?”
Dad shrugged. “I know what it looks like when your heart breaks,” he said. “You’ll always be my little boy, y’know. No matter how big you get.”
My lips twitched, but I couldn’t quite maintain a smile. “I’m not heartbroken.”
It sounded weak, even to me.
Dad only raised an eyebrow as he sipped his beer again.
“I’m not,” I said. “I knew it was just a… fling, or whatever.”
The wordflingfelt weird on my tongue, and not just because I couldn’t ever remember using it before. I didn’t think of it that way. I never had.
The problem was that Ihadn’tthought. I hadn’t really thought about what it meant that Felix wasn’t—couldn’t be—forever.
It wasn’t that I thought people ought to mate like swans, no matter how many times I’d seenSwan Lake. It was just…
Well. I wanted to. I wanted someone I could keep. I’d never wanted anything else, and it hurt every time Icouldn’tkeep them.
“Be honest with me, is this your screw up, or his?” Dad asked. “Because my advice will vary.”
“I wish it was that simple.” I turned my beer around between my hands, picking at the edge of the label with my thumbnail. “Felix got an offer to join a new dance company in LA.”
Dad raised an eyebrow.
“As a choreographer,” I clarified. “It’s what he told me he wanted to do, way back when we invited him to dinner. It keeps him in the ballet world. It’s… ballet is his wholelife. It’s all he’s ever known. I can’t…”
“Compete with that?” Dad asked, gentle.
I looked up from my beer to find sympathy written all over his face, brows soft and eyes crinkled at the corners.
I’d actually been about to say something likecan’t ask him to give that up for me, but I supposed it amounted to the same thing. I couldn’t compete.
What did I have to offer? I worked for my dad as a small-town mechanic and I had a six-year-old who had to come first, always.Iwas happy with that. Now that I’d settled in here, I was looking forward to the shape I could see my life taking. I got to spend all my time with people I loved more than anything.
