The tears finally broke free. I shoved my chair back from the table and fled. Maybe it was childish—but I didn’t care,I didn’t care,because my mother was…
Selfish. It was selfish. How dare she try to leave us before we were ready? She had a choice; she couldstay.
I slammed my bedroom door shut behind me, hard enough the picture frames rattled on the wall. I felt like a child, like I might as well be two goddamn years old, as I flung myself onto my bed and pressed my face into my pillow and screamed.
It wasn’t fair. This was…she couldn’t be serious. She hadn’t thought this all the way through. She didn’t realize the effect it would have on me and Dad to be without her, that was all. We’d make her realize. We’d make her see reason.
But even as I whispered these reassurances to myself, I knew how this ended.
I’d known it for a long time.
6
Jamie
“You know what,” Shrishti says.
We’re at the bar—thebar, not just any bar—Shrishti in her favorite blue sparkly dress, me in the same cheap suit I always wear. She’s sitting on the barstool across from me, fingers toying with her fancy yellow cocktail, watching me with the kind of expression that I already know means trouble.
“What?”
“I think you like her.”
I frown. “Like who?”
Shrishti waggles her brows. “Goldie. I think youlikeher.”
I laugh before I can help myself; it comes out like a snort. “Haha, very funny.”
“I’m serious!”
My eyes roll right to the back of my head. “Uh-huh. Sure. That’s the kernel of truth at the heart of all this. I’m harboring a secret teenage crush on the most obnoxious person I’ve ever met.” I shake my head. “Come on, Shrishti. This isn’t a rom-com.”
“That’s something that a guy in a rom-com would say.”
“You watch too many movies.”
She shrugs. “I mean, probably. But you have to admit you areweirdly obsessed with her. Like…who hates somebodythismuch? It’s a little extra, don’t you think?”
Maybe. Probably. I don’t know. I’ve lost sight of whatever rubricI’m supposed to use to judge the appropriate amount of disdain I should assign any particular person before getting accused of being in love with them.
“Anyway, remember when you asked her on a date?” Shrishti points out. “At some point, you liked her.”
Before I fucked it all up? Yeah, no, I’m not claiming that one.
“Before you and Cessy broke up?” I say, maybe a little meanly.
But Shrishti seems unaffected. “Yeah, I guess that coincided with you and Goldie having your big falling-out. But you’re missing my point.”
“Which is…?”
She rolls her eyes. “Don’t play stupid, Jamie. I already said it—I think you like her.”
I drum my fingers against the bar top and tighten my lips. “Well, I don’t. So go ahead and mark that one as a miss.”
Shrishti is visibly unconvinced. Which is annoying, because she otherwise tends to be right about everything.
Only now that she’s said it, I can’t get it out of my mind. The whole time Shrishti is off in the bathroom, I’m sitting there staring at my drink and mulling it over.
