He's standing three feet away, cradling his right hand — he punched wrong, probably strained something in his fingers, and the irony of a professional athlete hurting himself throwing a punch in a strip mall parking lot would be funny if everything weren't falling apart.
"Yeah," Jason says. His voice is hollow. “We’re done."
He turns, walks to his SUV, and gets in. The door slams. The engine roars. The bass kicks back in, absurdly loud for the weight of the moment, and Jason Rujkowski peels out of the parking lot, tires screeching.
Ella and I stand in the cold silence afterward. Her hands are still on my face. My cheek throbs. A thin line of blood runs down my face, and she wipes it with her thumb, so gently.
"Let me see," she murmurs, turning my head. "It's superficial. You'll bruise."
"Ella."
"You should ice it when you get home. Twenty minutes on, twenty off." She steps back. Drops her hands. Wraps her arms around herself. "I need to figure some things out."
"Come home with me. We can talk?—"
"I need space, Bernard." She looks at the sub shop. "I'm going to go sit in there for a while. Maybe get something to eat. Think."
"Ella, your brother?—"
"Please." Her voice is quiet. "Go home."
I don't want to leave her in a strip mall parking lot. Every cell in my body revolts at the idea of getting in my car and driving away from Ella Rujkowski, standing in the cold with my blood on her thumb.
But she asked. And I've spent weeks learning that Ella asks for very little and means it completely when she does.
"Okay," I say. "I'll go."
She nods. Turns toward the sub shop. Pauses. "Ice your jaw. And your knee. Don't skip the knee just because your face hurts more acutely.”
"Yes, ma'am."
She almost smiles. Then she walks inside, and the glass door swings shut behind her, and I'm alone in the parking lot with a busted friendship and the wreckage of every secret I kept too long.
Because I am incapable of being a real adult, I have nowhere to sleep tonight that won’t get me murdered. I pull out my phone and text Mayhem.
Can I crash at your place tonight?
He responds in four seconds.
Door's open.
And so I don’t drive back to the condo to face Rookie, or stare at the evidence of Ella in my room. I pull out of the lot and head toward Observatory Hill to crash on yet another teammate’s couch.
Chapter 21
Ella
The sub shop is warm and smells like bread and pickles, and the fluorescent lights buzz overhead at a frequency that matches the static in my brain. A teenager behind the counter watches me sit alone in a booth for forty minutes and probably wonders if I'm having a breakdown.
I probably am.
I’m definitely running through scenarios while staring off into space, calculating life options.
If I failed the NCLEX, my provisional hire at Mercy is done-zo. No job. No paycheck. No apartment fund. No reason to stay in Pittsburgh.
If I passed, I have a career. But I also have a brother who won't speak to me and a man I can't be with and a life that just detonated in a parking lot outside this very establishment.
I eat the pickle, toss the sandwich, and leave the sub shop. I hop on the bus back to my brother’s condo, leaning my head against the cold window and watching Pittsburgh slide past in the growing dusk.
