The room feels soft around the edges, cottony from the pain meds. My head throbs in dull pulses. I squeeze my eyes shut. When would I have talked to Tully? Did I dream that? Did I?—
My breath catches.
Oh God.
I grab my phone off the nightstand so fast I almost drop it on the hardwood. My hands are clumsy, but Face ID blinks open when I hold the phone in front of my face. Tully’s name is right there at the top of my messages.
And this is why I never get drunk.
Of course drunk me went looking for him.
My thumb hovers over the thread.Don’t open it. Open it.I tap, and the screen floods with blue and gray bubbles, and for a second, I can’t even process what I’m looking at. There are so many words. So many from me. And him.
He started the conversation.
My eyes want to greedily take in all he said, but I can vaguely remember both giddiness and devastation when I read his texts last night. And then I see how emphatically I said I’d never stop loving him, and my chest caves in on itself.
God, why did I think I could text him back and not spill my entire soul onto the screen? As if vodka doesn’t pry open every locked door inside me. And Tully is the one person who still knows exactly where to press—it’s why I blocked him in the first place. I knew I’d eventually cave if I saw messages like this from him.
I keep scrolling, horrified.
I told him I didn’t leave because I stopped loving him. But then I just sound pathetic and too broken. Which isn’t untrue. But why the hell did I open my mouth?
My pulse pounds in my ears as I read his last text again,asking why I left him, and the phone vibrates in my hand. I drop it onto my chest like it burned me. When I see it’s a new text from him, at first I’m worried that I accidentally sent him something just now while I was panic-scrolling.
But no.
Tully
I’m not letting you off the hook this time, Lola. Please tell me why.
My throat closes.
I’m back in bed, sheets tangled around my legs like they’re trying to hold me here. The phone screen lights up my face in the dim room, too bright, too early. I stare at the words until they blur. My thumb hovers over the keyboard. I typeYou wouldn’t understandand delete it, then typeI’m sorryand delete that too. The little typing bubble appears, disappears, and appears again. He’s waiting.
Then the screen shifts, and there’s an incoming FaceTime from Tully. Holy shit.
My stomach drops. I look like absolute garbage. My hair is matted to one side, my eyes are swollen from crying half the night, and my skin is splotchy. My mascara has smudged into faint raccoon rings. I haven’t even brushed my teeth yet.
There’s no universe in which I should answer this call.
But maybe that’s exactly why I should.
Maybe if I let him see me like this, the wreck that I’ve become, he’ll realize he dodged a bullet and that I’m not the girl he keeps remembering. Maybe then he’ll be free to let me go.
I swipe to accept.
The screen fills with his face, and my breath stops.
He looks worse than I do.
One eye is almost swollen shut, the skin around it a deeppurple, fading to yellow at the edges. His lip is split, dried blood lining the cut, and his nose is a little more crooked than it was. He’s pale beneath the bruises.
“Tully—” My voice cracks. I sit up so fast the room tilts. “You look awful.”
“Hey,” he says. His voice is rough, like he can’t breathe through his nose.
“Are you okay?”
