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What if I just…don't go? he thought.

He shook his head. No—There was no way. The backlash from Preston wouldn't be worth it, and he didn't want to leave Joyce alone to deal with it on her own. He could totally see her getting drunk on martinis and falling overboard, so probably best to show up and support.

No. He’d go. It would be easy to stay home, avoid the whole thing, and spend another day spiraling alone in his apartment with only Teddy and his thoughts for company.

Fuck that.

Ethan’s gaze drifted to the notebook in the corner of his desk. It was wedged between a copy of The Odyssey and a lamp his mother had given him before he moved from New York. It had been a few weeks since he last wrote anything. A thick layer of dust had started to collect along the top, and it brought a heaviness to his chest as he looked at it.

Grabbing the notebook, he opened it up to pages of unfinished poems and stories he’d started and abandoned. As he searched for a blank page, he turned to his most recent entry and stopped, swallowing hard. There, in his handwriting from a few weeks ago:

Blue

Chaos swelled around me.

I noticed you first.

A held breath.

A single look.

Eyes as blue as the ocean.

Maybe I will stay.

It’s now or never.

Diving in.

His jaw clenched as he stared down at words that felt so foreign and hollow to him now.

Pathetic loser who writes poetry nobody will ever read.

Had any of it been real? He let the thought finally float to the surface. All those weeks together. How many times had every shy smile, lingering look, or every moment he thought they were connecting…just been a performance?

The words, Diving in, looked back mockingly.

But that was exactly what he’d done, wasn’t it? Like a goddamn idiot. Dove headfirst off a cliff for a woman he didn’t fully know, and had barely told him anything about herself. So many red flags that he ignored, just because he finally thought someone saw him, understood him.

Ethan balled his fists. Why was he the one to blame? She let him fall. Let him tell her things he’d never shared with anyone.

Let him kiss her, want her…only to stand over him like he was nothing, breaking him to pieces.

It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t okay. Maybe Evie wasn’t the woman he thought she was in any way.

The thought soured his stomach, and despite the anger and betrayal he felt…he knew it wasn’t true.

Part of him wished it was, though, because the alternative was far worse and even more confusing.

The notebook spine cracked in his grasp, and he shook his head.

“No,” he muttered through his teeth.

The kiss was real. Everything they’d bonded over was not something you could fake. Evie had seen something inside Ethan that he didn’t even know was there, something she found beautiful and precious—just like he saw in her. He pressed his palms into his eyes, white stars dancing behind his lids.

That’s not you, he told himself. I know it’s not.

He turned the pages until he found a blank sheet, and snatched a pen from the soup can he used as a pen holder, staring blankly at the page.