The lights go out
You don’t know me now
It’s all breaking down
We’re just strangers in the dark
—US Lyric Bot [@HourlyUs]
Four years ago, after Jake left for auditions, he sent me a text that said,I got in the band.
Congrats, I’m so proud of you!!!!!!!, I replied, unable to stop myself from adding at least seven exclamation points.
I won the bee btw!I told him next, keeping my promise to let him know how it’d gone, and attached a picture of my trophy. Then, in a surge of bravery, I sent,Can we talk about that kiss?
But he never replied—not until months later, when he sent a single text that read,For whatever it’s worth: I’m sorry.
That’s the last I ever heard from him.
Until he turned up here without warning and had the nerve to act all chill.
What was that guythinking? A heads-up before he made an appearance would’ve been nice.
When I sent that email, I thought I’d only have to interact with Jake—or Jake’s publicity team—on the other side of a screen. It was supposed to feel uninvolved. Unemotional. Distant.
This was so not uninvolved and distant.
I resisted the urge to bang my head against the steering wheel horn.
I never thought I’deversee Jake in person again.
How did he appear so unaffected by seeing me, when I felt my insides tying themselves up in knot after knot? How dare he be socasualabout everything, as if he had nothing to apologize for after he ended things the way he did?
I turned my car down my block, gripping the wheel tightly and furiously chewing my watermelon gum. I needed to talk to Mom. She’d been there for me through all my ups and downs, listening to every single one of my rants and giving me advice. There was nothing I couldn’t tell her.
Okay, well, nothing except for the fact that I could possibly be ruining the one thing I was supposed to be keeping safe for her.
I spat out my gum into a wrapper, got out of my car, and started across the driveway. As I approached my duplex door, I saw Isabelle, my fifteen-year-old neighbor, sitting under the awning of our shared front porch, listening to music and holding a Munchin’ snack bag.
“Hey,” Isabelle said as she slid her lavender headphones down around her neck. “Anything new happen at the café?”
Something happened, all right.
“No news to report,” I answered. Mostly because saying itall out loud right now would cause shrieks to be heard within a five-mile radius. Half of which would be from me. For a very different reason than Isabelle’s.Keep it together, Lucy. “No adoptions today.”
Isabelle made a sad face. She loved hearing about when one of our cats got to find their family. “Have a pretzel,” she said generously, holding out the Munchin’ bag as if the chocolate-and-caramel-covered pretzels inside would solve my problems.
You know what? Maybe they couldn’t, but it was certainly a good place to start.
Reaching into the bag, I grabbed a piece and popped it into my mouth.
Then I looked down and nearly choked.
Jake Moody’s face stared at me from the Munchin’ bag.
I blinked, wondering if I imagined it, and this was merely a silly little hallucination from shock.
But no, my second look confirmed it really was Jake on the Munchin’ bag, next to Phillip, Leon, and Aspen.A snack for you, from US, the package proclaimed in bright-red letters.
