“So that’s it?” I say, and my voice barely shows up.
“If we don’t do it now, we do it later,” he says. “You’d get tired of me. I’d make you smaller, watching me count down days while you’re in your studio, and we’d just—” He breaks off. “We’d rot.”
“I’m leaving San Francisco,” I blurt. “I’m packing right now. I’m moving to Wichita. Kansas.”
“If that’s what you want,” he says after a pause, “then yeah. It makes sense.”
“It doesn’t make sense.” I kick one of the boxes hard enough to sting my toes. “Listen to yourself. It’s like you know you’re holding a winning lottery ticket.” I wince at my own metaphor and barrel on. “And you’re refusing to cash it. Why?”
Ash sighs. “Because I don’t play the lottery.”
I groan. He’s so frustratingly predictable.
“The yo-yo,” I say, grabbing for a different memory. “That thing you said. Up and down, yeah? But uphill. We’re uphill, Ash.”
The silence on the other end is excruciating, and a tear slips down my cheek.
“I can’t be that for you,” he says. Then, quieter: “Goodbye, Kael.”
I whisper his name into the line, but he’s already gone. The call ends with a soft click, and all that love I finally said out loud has nowhere to go.
CHAPTER 34
ASH
I take a sick day.Query will survive. I need just one day where I’m not pretending I’m fine. I’m not sick; I’m heartbroken, which I’m making a valid medical condition.
Jenny calls it stupidity, stubbornness, and I enter the code to her garage expecting to get an earful. It opens to reveal she’s already sitting at the orange recording table.
“Good,” she says flatly, lips drawn to a line while looking at the soundboard. “You’re here.”
“Great to see you too.” I go in for a hug.
She slumps into it like a wet noodle. “Ready?”
I take my seat across from her, not getting any eye contact. “You’re mad.”
“Why do you care what I think?” she says, eyes still on her laptop. “You want to be miserable? Fine. Just don’t infect the rest of us.”
She told me to call him, and I did the exact opposite of what she was hoping for.
“He’s not right for me, right? Maybe I’m just pulling tomorrow’s pain into today to get it over with.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Can you tell me how long you plan to be mad for?”
“I don’t know, Ash. I haven’t planned out every moment of my future like you.”
I flip open my laptop. The last tab I had open is my net worth spreadsheet, and it stares back at me.
Jenny sees it and snorts. “Of course.” She huffs. “We’re with Isabella today.”
“I remember,” I say.
“Good.” Jenny slams her laptop into place between us.
“Jenny, can we just?—”
