the ring. Recounting what really happened last night sounds as pleasant as prying a molar from my own mouth. I need to send them proof of life to buy me some more time to wallow.
“Bri!” I turn to find Liem, his hair wet, hands tucked into his hoodie pockets, an attempt at a smile on his lips.
“There you are. I think I have your phone.”
“You do,” he says. “We switched last night so we wouldn’t call the—”
Exes. “Oh yeah, I remember now.”
“Here.” He digs into his back pocket and hands me my phone.
“Thanks. Here’s yours.”
His gaze falls to the phone, but he makes no move to take it, deflating at the mere thought. I get it. I’m afraid I’ll see a notification that reopens my wound and with it, the floodgate of tears. Or worse, see nothing and feel as tossed aside as I did last night. Until I met Liem.
“I can hang on to it for you for a while longer, if you want,” I offer.
A little bit of life returns to him. “You will?”
There is no reason for me to eat breakfast with him. I’m not hungry, not wearing a stitch of makeup, and my hair is thrown into a bun with zero attention paid to my edges, but still, the thought of leaving him alone saddens me. It’s that innocence of his again. He’s almost a foot taller than me, trim not thin under that hoodie, but he makes me want to take him in like a lost puppy.
“I will. Want to get some br—” The word makes me gag. “Some coffee?”
He perks up like he’s the new kid in school and I just invited him to sit at my lunch table. “I love coffee.”
There is a reason this breakfast costs forty-five dollars. Anall-you-can-eat buffet of decadence with muffins of different flavors, bagels with an assortment of spreads, eggs in every style, andbacon. The greasy goodness is the only food calling to me right now.
We find a booth shielded from the sun. Liem’s pretty eyes are still puffy and red like he spent his morning crying and mourning his lack of sleep, same as me.
I’m compelled to ask, “How are you feeling?”
“I’m okay.”
Please. A squirrel trying to cross a busy highway is more okay than we are right now. “You can be completely real with me. What am I going to do? Judge you? We won’t even know each other after today.” He searches my eyes, accepting the permission I give him. “So. How are you really feeling?”
“Dead inside.”
His quick response catches me off guard and makes me laugh. “You cried all morning, didn’t you?”
“No,” he says with the emphasis of a bad liar. “Okay, yes, but only in the shower, so that barely counts.”
“Barely.” I mimic his tone.
A grin twitches at the corners of his lips. “How areyoufeeling?”
“Dead insideandhungover.”
“It’s not a competition.”
Stop. Why is he so easy to talk to?We have the same sense of humor, the same phone, the same oddly specific villain origin story . . . He’s little more than a stranger, but I’m glad he’s beside me. If only for a day.
“What are you going to do now?” I ask.
“Today?”
“Yes. Or life in general, now that all this happened.”
“I was thinking about bringing the hair dryer into the bath with me, but that would be mean to the housekeeping staff, and they’ve been really nice.”
