I want my sisters to need me. Even one of them, even once.
I want Maisy to miss me the way I miss her.
I want Evan to admit that I was his naïve little bed warmer. I want him to take a polygraph and answer questions likeDid you know what you were doing? Did you know it wasn’t fair? Did you listen at all when I told you that you were my first time, my first boyfriend, or did you listen way too closely?
I want Liam—
I want Liam.
You walk through the world, perceive it, connect to it, in this one specific way.
I’m doing it even now. I lie there and write the entire song in my mind: “Lonely House.”
“Fuck you,” I whisper to the ceiling when I’m done, with no bite.
I don’t move for over an hour.
Folly eventually comes back from who knows where. She slips quietly into the apartment and says nothing. Just sits beside me on the carpet, her legs crisscrossed. I don’t look at her.
“What were you doing?” I ask.
“Got coffee with a friend from high school. She’s on her way to Baja, Mexico, and asked if I wanted to tag along and help with some odd jobs that she has lined up down there. House-sitting, landscaping, nannying, stuff like that.”
Fresh tears well in my eyes.
I still don’t even have a fucking passport.
“Sounds right up your alley,” I whisper.
“Paige, what’s wrong? Is Liam okay?”
Finally, I roll my head to look at Folly. Concern is etched into her every pore. She’s listened to me all week as I described the surgery, his mental state, his drugged-upI love you, his daily updates while he rested at home in Savannah. We’ve spent days packing up this apartment since the lease ends in two weeks and Folly isn’t planning to stay in Knoxville past then. She’s been voicing ideas for what comes next forher, correctly assuming I’d orient mine around Liam. I was planning to find a cheaper apartment, a studio, somewhere close to his dorm.
“You didn’t know?” I ask.
“Know what?”
Brokenly, I explain. Everything. Folly is far more interested inwhyLiam applied me than she isthathe applied me behind my back. She’s always known me to be musical, but I admit to her that songwriting has become an important part of my life over the last two years.
Folly doesn’t even blink when I tell her Zara and Maren were both in on it.
“I’m sure Zara was on the fence and Maren convinced her,” she grumbles.
“Yeah,” I agree.
“Why don’t you want to go to Belmont?” she asks.
I sit upright, blood rushing from my head. My fingers rub at my temples. “It’s not that I’m trying to be contrary,” I say.
“Right,” Folly says, lips curving. “You aren’tme.”
I smile at her weakly as the sense of being in my body finally returns. “What if I can’t cut it?” I whisper.
She doesn’t hesitate. “What if you can?”
“What if the other students are out of my league?”
She shrugs. “What if you have to work really fucking hard to catch up?”
