Chapter Seven
BRYNN
Packinga suitcase should be a ten-minute job. Roll, fold, stack, zip. But I’d spent the last hour staging a small-scale invasion of my closet, every shirt and sock. The contents of my life—wrinkled sundresses, half-used travel bottles, an embarrassing amount of hair products—looked both pitifully meager and overwhelming.
I yanked on a buckle inside, but it jammed. The resistance sent a spike of rage up my neck. I wanted to hurl the whole thing off the balcony. Instead, I slumped onto the mattress and stared at the ceiling fan. My jaw ached from being clenched so long. Every time I swallowed, my throat fought back, the memory of Dean’s exit still snagged there like a fishhook. He’d been gone a couple of hours, and I’d immediately latched onto the mindless activity of packing to delay the inevitable.
It was almost funny how heartbreak turned you into your worst self. Last night, I’d been full of heat and daring. Today, I was a stone statue—heavy, silent, hollow. Thecrying hadn’t started yet, but I could feel it lurking, waiting for me to loosen my grip. Outside my window, gulls shrieked, utterly unbothered by human drama. I envied them.
I rolled a shirt, my hands shaking enough to make the seams crooked. I started over, desperate to get it right. It was the only thing I could control. I held up the blue linen dress, the one I’d worn to the mixer the first night. It seemed so long ago.
Themoving on with my lifedress.
I held it up to my face, the fabric cool against my cheek. “Where am I going to wear it? To grade papers on my couch? To another awkward faculty mixer? To a solo dinner at the same Thai place I always go to?”
My gaze dropped to the other items in my suitcase—sensible shorts, my one swimsuit, my teacher-friendly tops. I tried to picture myself putting them back in my closet in Atlanta, slotting them back into the neat, predictable, safe life I’d built.
The thought brought a wave of suffocating dread.
I clenched my eyes and said the truth out loud. “My safe life in Atlanta isn’t a home. It’s a waiting room. I’ve been waiting for my real life to start for years, and I’m scared it just walked out the door.”
The idea of going back to that quiet, empty apartment, to that life where I had a great job but nothing else ever happened, was more terrifying than the prospect of staying here with a broken heart. But would working here as a teacher be any different? The more I thought about it, the more unrealistic Doris’s off-the-cuff idea of selling me the ice cream shop seemed. I’d never qualify for financing.
I couldn’t go forward. I didn’t want to go back. But whatelse was there? I rolled up the dress and placed it inside the duffel.
A soft knock came at the door. I knew it was Holly before she spoke—nobody else in the family knocked gently. “Brynn? You up?”
I almost lied. Said I was fine or pretended to be sleeping. She was probably here to gush about her post-wedding-night bliss, and I wasn’t sure I could take it. But the shape of her shadow under the door broke my will.
“Yeah,” I replied and opened the door. “Come in.”
Holly slipped in, her hair in a messy bun that defied the laws of physics. She took in the battlefield of clothes, her gaze flicking from my scattered, half-packed clothing to my empty stare. “Did a hurricane come through? Or is this some sort of metaphor?”
“Packing,” I said. My voice was as flat as a test pattern.
She hovered by the desk, clearly wanting to hug me but too smart to close in before I was ready. “You’re not leaving until tomorrow.”
“I wanted to get a head start.”
She sat on the foot of the bed, careful not to disturb the shirts. “B, are you okay?”
I let out a sound, something between a cough and a laugh. “Not exactly.”
Holly chewed her lip, then picked up a T-shirt and started folding. I stared at the angry red half-moons where my nails had dug into my palms. The words were a clot in my chest, but I forced them out.
“He left,” I said, flopping onto the unmade bed. The one that still smelled like him. “Dean, I mean. He just… left.”
She blinked, her expression shifting from concern toconfusion. “Left? What do you mean, left? I thought the plan was to fake it through the trip.”
I shook my head, heat pricking behind my eyes. “Thatwasthe plan. But it… it stopped being fake for me, Hols.” I snapped my jaw shut, embarrassed by the tears worming out despite all my defenses.
Holly edged closer and sat, her hand finding my ankle. “Brynn, what happened?”
I tried to smile and failed. “It stopped being a joke. I fell for him, and we had this stupid, amazing night. It became real to me. And I thought he felt it too.”
“And?”
I thought of his raw, very real panic attack. No, I wouldn’t talk about that. Regardless of what happened, that was a confidence between him and me. “He woke up and looked at me like I’d ruined his life. He couldn’t even stay in the same room. He’s probably already rescheduled his flight and is on his way to the airport.”
