“I’m not mad at you,” he says tightly. “I just—I have to go. I don’t have time for this right now.”
I stare at the screen, my heart slamming against my ribs.
“You don’t havetime?” I explode. “I’ve been waiting for you for hours, Hayes. Where the hell are you?”
“What are you talking about?”
“We had plans!” Rage floods through me like hot lava. “Movie night. Your house. Halloween. You told me to come over.”
There’s a pause. Then, a scoff.
“I missed a movie, Alysander. It’s not the end of the world.”
That’s it.
That’s the moment the knife slips between my ribs and twists, cleaving my heart from my chest. Something inside me dies because I know, suddenly and with awful clarity, that whatever’s been happening between us is worse than I thought. Maybe past the point of fixing.
He didn’t just blow me off.
He forgot about me entirely.
“Not just a movie…” I whisper.
There’s another pause as static crackles through the line. And then I hear it, the shift, like something clicking into place.
“Oh, shit. Your birthday,” he mutters. “Al, listen?—”
“Let me guess,” I cut in. “Another frat party? Or wait—are you out with my sister again?”
“It’s not like that?—”
“You forgot,” I say, the pain crashing through me, deep and merciless as tears burn behind my eyes. “You knew I needed you tonight, Hay. And you didn’t show.”
My hurt is laced through every syllable. I don’t even bother hiding it anymore. I’m too tired. Too raw. Because it’s not just tonight. This has been building for weeks, slow and quiet, like rot.
I can’t pretend any longer. I have to face the truth.
Hayes doesn’t care about me.
At least not the way he used to.
“I gotta go,” I say, barely getting the words out. “Mom and Amber are waiting for me. They have… presents… and cake?—”
“Al,” he interrupts. “I’m in Athens.”
I blink.
“You’re… where?”
“I left last night.”
“To Greece?” I ask, stupidly. “Is everything okay?”
The only logical explanation I can think of is that something’s happened with his father’s business, that something went wrong. Why else would Hayes board a transatlantic flight overnight, at the last minute, without telling anyone?
The silence on the line stretches, heavy andunbroken. A strange, tight panic slowly claws up my spine, scraping against my ribs.
Then his voice comes through at last, low and fractured.
