My voice sounds strange to my own ears.
“You sure? You look like you’ve just realized something terrible.”
He has no idea how accurate that is.
“Just thinking about health-and-safety regulations around balloon animals,” I manage.
Archie rolls his eyes. “I guess it’s one step forward, two steps back on the fun thing.”
I look at him, at this impossible, brilliant, infuriating man in a space costume, surrounded by balloon animals and glow sticks, making the world brighter just by existing in it.
I’m in love with him.
And he has no idea.
I don’t want to leave London.
My consultancy is flexible. I’ve been running meetings remotely for weeks with Zoom calls in the evening, catching the middle to end of the US business day, thanks to the time difference. My clients don’t care where I am as long as I deliver. Most of them don’t even know I’m in the UK.
I could make this work.
I could even keep doing the parties. The thought surprises me, but it’s true. I don’t hate them anymore. I might even—and I will deny this under oath—enjoy them.
I could stay.
The thought settles into my chest like something warm and heavy. Like a key fitting into a lock I didn’t know was there.
But staying means telling Archie the truth. All of it. The syrup. Vaughn. The fact that every day we’ve spent together started with a lie.
And I have no idea how to do that without losing everything I’ve just realized I want to keep.
Chapter Thirty
Archie
The apartment feels different without Elizabeth. Like a stage after the audience has left.
There’s no coat on the hook or penetrating gaze coming from the armchair. No one making me feel like my emotional state is being silently graded on a scale I don’t have access to.
It’s just Leo and me now.
We spend the evening doing what we always do—takeout, the detective show, arguing about whether the lead character’s deductions are scientifically plausible. But there’s something different in the air. An awareness that the rules have changed now that Elizabeth’s gone. Every time our eyes meet, the question neither of us is asking gets louder.
When the episode ends, Leo switches off the TV.
“So,” he says. “Elizabeth’s gone.”
“Observant as always.” I swallow. “You can stop pretending to like me now.”
“I wasn’t pretending.”
He says the words simply. Just three words, stated like a fact. Like the chemical composition of Jupiter or the correct steeping time for Earl Grey.
I blink.
I should have a response to that because I always have a response. My brain generates comebacks the way other people’s brains generate involuntary reflexes. It’s what I do.
Nothing comes.
