For a minute, I forget I’m not talking to somebody who lives on Planet Ace. According to her and the rest of Earth, Cheyenne’s word is the only one that matters. They don’t care that Ace is a person too—that he’s Angie’s son and the type of man that gave me anything I asked for, even when I couldn’t give him the one thing he wanted most.
The weight of last night and right now is too much to hold. The trembling in my arms won’t go away. It keeps drifting to my fingers that refuse to accept Ace’s phone calls and respond to his texts.
All I hear is Blake laying out the missing parts of Ace’s puzzling life for me. He filled in each piece that Ace would never give me and now that I had them; I don’t blame Ace for keeping them a secret, because of how jagged they were. They were so jagged and his words were so unsure that my brain was fighting my heart for the first time in my life.
“If I knew you were dating him, I would’ve supported you.”
“Dating?” I gasp out.
“Well... that’s what the article said.”
“Article?What article?”
“The one on TMZ, but I saw it on Insta and—and somebody on Twitter says it came from theLA Times.”
I fling my blanket off my legs and sprint toward the bathroom.
That vomit that kept easing its way up my esophagus sits right at the base of my throat when I charge toward the toilet, knocking the door closed behind me.
“Phat!” Mama hollers from her bed. “Stop slamming my damn doors!”
I curl my arms around the toilet’s cold porcelain sides.
“Are you throwing up? Shit, Lourdes. I—I mean shoot. I’m coming over there.”
“No!”
Pink froth pours out of my mouth between violent chokes. Soreness rolls through my stomach while my body tries to evict anything that’s left in it, but all I had yesterday was a strawberry Dum-Dum... and Ace.
“Breathe.” Chelsea pants, gagging along with me. “Just breathe. We can fix this before Monday.”
“Monday?” I wail out, coughing.
“You’re coming to campus, right?”
I forgot that time still exists on Earth. There, my life doesn’t revolve around opulent galas, on-demand bear claws or obsessing over Ace’s next touch. On Earth, time moves at a blinding pace. Mama’s still sick. Marcus can’t cope. And I’m that nobody that everybody knows now because of a man they taught me to hate.
I gasp out another choke. “I can’t go back there.”
“You can’t dropout over this. You wanted to enroll with me and Bryson so bad. You begged your Mama for this. You can’t leave over some boy. There’s a million other dudes out there and you’re going to let one force you into hiding because of somethinghedid.”
“He’s not just some boy and you don’t even know if he did it!”
It’s scary the way the words build in my throat and push out without help—even after learning about those jagged unsure pieces.
“So youaredating him? Jesus, Lourdes, you’re confusing me!”
“I—I don’t know! You the one confusing me! You said you’d support me and now—now you’re saying something else!”
The phone slides from my fingers and crashes onto the floor. One last violent spasm rocks my stomach before I push away and patter towards Mama’s room.
Her eyes open when I push the door forward.
“What’s wrong?” She pushes up on her elbows with trembling arms. “I heard you in the bathroom. I hope you ain’t eat that chili at the game last night. You know I can’t get up to help you clean up no throw—”
“I’m not going back to campus,” I blurt with a hiccup.
Her eyebrows curl. “Why not? What’s wrong?”
