“You probably don’t,” she agreed with a sigh. “Is AP Lit going any better?”
“Oh, absolutely not.” I threw myself back on my bed. “I’ve read all the words inThe Great Gatsby, but I couldn’t tell you what it’s about. Like, I say the words aloud in one part of my brain, but they don’t register in the rest of it.”
“What’s going on in the rest of it?”
I shrugged. “It’s picturing you, mostly. Or the path it takes to get to you. One part of my brain is on the interstate right now, actually.”
“Sawyer.”
It was wistful, the way she said my name. Like she wasn’t disappointed in me and the way my brain worked.
“It’s just…you’re so close but sooo far.”
“It’s, like, thirty minutes,” she laughed.
“Are you trying to convince me not to come or to come, here, El?”
Her smile, even through the slightly blurry screen, was beautiful. “You know I want you to be here, but I’ll see you this weekend. Right?”
“Right.”
I’d rather see her tonight, but I didn’t say that.
Ellie’s roommate was going to be gone this weekend, which meant we’d have her room to ourselves. And that was more than I could really ask for.
I might spend this entire year living for the weekends, but at least Ihad those. At least she was close. So close that sometimes I wondered if I was holding her back.
Eleanor could have gone to college anywhere, really. She was so talented and bright and had astronomical ACT scores.
She promised me she hadn’t picked the U solely for me, but I knew I was part of it. I was grateful…and guilty. So I was just happy that she was finding programs and clubs that aligned with her interests—like the coding one.
Hopefully, it was enough for her.
Hopefully,Iwas enough for her.
Hopefully, when I finally got to college, I’d finish in three years so that this one-year gap would never happen again.
I never wanted to be away from her again.
Never.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
ellie
I’D SENT SULLY AWAY, but the truth was, I didn’t want to do any of this alone.
I didn’t want to give myself this shot.
But even more than that, I didn’t want to sit in this abnormally quiet house by myself.
I wasn’t sure if I’d ever really spent time in the Londons’ house without any of the Londons, and in some ways, the absence of them when they were usually so present made me feel even more alone. But everything that had led me to this moment, this place, this time, had been of my choice and my making, so all I could do was breathe and move forward.
And that was what I did.
I took a long, warm shower before changing into a comfortable pair of shorts and one of Sully’s old shirts from his room—a faded one from a summer baseball league. It hit me mid-thigh, absorbing my shorts beneath it, and smelled like him. God, it smelled enough like him that I almost cried.
But then I made myself a cup of decaf coffee, sat at the kitchen table, and pulled myself together enough to finish organizing my medication. I read the information pamphlet from beginning to end—something I always did now when being prescribedsomething new. I took note of every side effect, of every precaution. All of it.
