But…
I pull my phone out one more time and look at the squirrel meme.
Dr. Nutsworth stares back at me, fat and brazen and completely unrepentant.
Maybe he’s proof that some things do survive, even when you think they’re gone.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Leo
San Francisco hasn’t changed.
The same fog settles over the hills. The same wind funnels through the Financial District like it has a personal vendetta.
I’ve been back for twenty-two days now. Not that I’m counting.
My apartment is on the thirty-second floor of a building in SoMa, all floor-to-ceiling windows, clean lines, and the kind of minimalist aesthetic that used to make me feel like I’d made it. Now it just makes me feel like I’m living inside a furniture showroom. It’s like how the apartment I shared with Archie was before it became filled with the clutter of half-eaten packets of cookies and costume wigs on doorknobs and random flecks of glitter. I never thought I’d miss finding random sparkles in unexpected places so much.
This morning, I make coffee in my sterile apartment. I check my emails. I do the things Leo Brennan does, trying to pretend I haven’t spent another restless night trying not to replay my memories of Archie and failing.
Then, because apparently I have no self-control whatsoever, I check Archie’s Instagram.
And my heart lurches.
He’s posted a photo of himself and Vaughn. They’re in a pub, judging by the low lighting and pint glasses on the table in front of them. Archie’s grinning directly at the camera and Vaughn is beside him, not quite smiling but close. Their body language is cautious—a few inches of space between them, Vaughn’s posture slightly stiff, but they’re there. Together. In the same frame.
The caption reads:The good thing about going out with my big brother is that he buys all the drinks. @vaughnmansley
I stare at the photo for longer than I should.
Archie looks happy.
And it’s not his performer-happy, the bright, weaponized cheer he deploys when he’s trying to keep people at a comfortable distance. This seems softer and more tentative. The happiness of someone who’s been handed something they’d stopped believing they could have.
I put my phone down. Pick it up again. Zoom in on his face.
Archie is smiling, and I did that. I mean, I didn’t do it directly. I didn’t force them to reconcile or stage-manage the reunion. But I made a choice in a conference room near Liverpool Street, and this photo exists because of it.
That should be enough.
It’s not.
But it should be.
Fuck.
I close Instagram and go for a run. Six miles along the waterfront, the bay wind sharp against my face, my lungs burning in a way that almost crowds out the other ache. Almost.
At mile four, I pass a guy in a full dinosaur costume handing out flyers for a comedy club. Three months ago, I wouldn’t have broken stride. Today, I slow down enough to take a flyer from him. People who’ve been forced to try to maintain their dignity while dressed as a prehistoric reptile are a small subset on this planet. We’ve got to stick together.
When I get back to my apartment, sweating and no less miserable, I shower and check my calendar. Lunch meeting with Gus at twelve. Then, a call with a startup founder who wants me to tell her whether her pet food subscription service is viable. It isn’t, but she’s paying me to say it diplomatically.
It’s a normal day in my normal life. The life I had before Archie Mansley crashed into it like a small, chaotic asteroid with a great smile and the intellectual capacity to run a small country by himself.
I check Instagram one more time.
I need to stop doing this. I need to stop scrolling through the videos of him performing as Captain Giggles, stop looking for traces of how he is and whether he’s missing me as much as I’m missing him.
