This was my life, now. Reminders of my father breaking my heart, over and over.
“I don’t hate you, you know.” Phoebe’s voice wrenched me out of my whirlpool of grief. Lightning flashed overhead.
“Oh, good,” Dex muttered. “I was losing sleep.”
“I know that was your whole plan,” Phoebe continued conversationally. “To make us hate you.”
He squinted through the windshield, the wipers on full blast and barely making a dent in the flow. “Am I supposed to ask why?”
“Nah, it’s obvious. You have trust issues.”
He scoffed. “Sure.”
“You push people away because it’s better to be the one to leave than to be the one left behind,” she explained. “Plus, you’re pissed we reminded you of something you want to forget. Maybe if you, like, actually dealt with your issues, you could move on.”
I resisted the painful urge to laugh. How fucking ironic.
“Is that what you’re doing?” Dex countered, voicing my own thoughts. “Hounding a stranger about a letter you had no business reading? This is you dealing with your issues?”
“I’m fourteen. You’re middle-aged. You do the math,” she said.
His grip on the wheel loosened and a soft sound whooshed out of him, something almost like a laugh. “I’m thirty-one.”
“That’s too old to be arguing with a teenager.” I could hearthe smile in her voice. I stopped myself before glancing over my shoulder to see it. I didn’t want to intrude on whatever was happening here; Phoebe and Dex going tit for tat with ease, as if they’d known each other forever. How was it so easy for her to talk to this man? Why was it so impossible for her to talk tome? “Look,” she said, her voice dipping into something softer, sympathetic. “You’re right. We don’t know you. But wedidread that letter, so we know how you felt. And it seems like you’re still kinda steeping in that.”
The car slowed, blinker ticking. Dex turned into the parking lot of our building, pulling right up to the entrance. Another roll of thunder filled the air.
“Why did that letter show up now?” she pressed. “You haven’t lived here in, what? A year? Don’t you think there’s a reason this happened?”
“I don’t believe in fate.”
“Fate or not, that letter showed up. You cared so much that you wrote it, once. Yousentit. How does that not mean something to you?” That muscle in his jaw jumped, but he didn’t respond. “All this time,” Phoebe said softly. “Don’t you think she deserves to know you were sorry?”
Dex winced and hunched over to press his forehead against the steering wheel. He’d been so careful to remain stoic, it struck me somewhere tender.
Two things occurred to me at once:I like him better like thisandHe’s going to give in.
“Whoa,” Phoebe said, popping up between the center console again. “I think I broke him.”
Outside, the rain picked up, blurring out the rest of the world.
“Dex.” My voice was quiet, but he straightened and looked at me, those dark eyes wide and wild, searching mine. I didn’tknow what he was looking for and it made me want to cover my entire body in bubble wrap.
“Why?” he asked. “Why should we do this?”
“Because—” Phoebe started, but he held up his hand to stop her.
“I know why you want to. I know why I should. I want to know her reason.” He tilted his head in my direction. I could feel Phoebe’s sharp gaze on me, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from Dex. “Is there anything in this for you that has nothing to do with your sister?”
They both expected a knee-jerk answer and I almost complied. It would be so easy to lean into the desperation to make Phoebe happy, to let it consume me, to let that be my purpose. Isn’t that what I’d done for the last nine months? But three stories above us, my best friend’s life tumbled forward at a steady clip without me.
I wassohappy for Arden and Noah. I was so fucking devastated for myself.
“My best friend is getting engaged tonight,” I heard myself say. Phoebe slowly drew back in her seat. Dex kept staring, his expression inscrutable. “I love her and I’m happy for her, but now I am excruciatingly aware of the gap between us. How far she’s moved in a year and how I’ve been standing still, hiding from everything. I’m sick of standing still. I need to do something. And yeah, this is probably a bad idea and everyone is going to think we’re batshit crazy, but hey! Maybe I am. Grief is fucked!”
Phoebe leaned forward. “Admitting you’re crazy is not the way to get him on board.”
“What do you want me to do? Pay him? We’re broke.”
