EPILOGUE
Haley (The next protagonist)
Today is the gazillionth SEA Games. I’m sure there’s a number.
I’m just too lazy to check. We’re all gathered at Lily’s, while Kate and Emily are on Facetime.
Emily’s back in New York. Kate’s in some bland hotel room that could be in Manila or Malaysia or Mars for all I can tell, with Michael in the background stretching.
The table in front of us is a glorious mess: three separate bowls of popcorn (one sweet, one salty, one inexplicably spicy), enough chips to keep a small village alive for a week, and six sweating glasses of various soft drinks and juices. Half are mine. Yes, half. I like options.
“We miss you, Kate,” I say as she ties her hair from the screen. She’s with Michael, and they’re traveling for the SEA games. “We miss your cookies. Bon tried to bake a batch, and now I think we all have salmonella.”
Bon shoots me a glance. “You can’t get salmonella from cookies,” she says.
“From your cookies, we can!” I say.
Ryan snorts, but immediately stops and says, “They’re great, Bon.” But Bon rolls her eyes. I’m sure even she knew those cookies were inedible.
We go back and forth for a while—Bon defending her “experimental” baking methods, Ryan making safe diplomatic noises, Emily laughing, probably thinking how grateful she is that she’s not physically here. Kate is smiling fondly from the screen.
But under all the banter, I’m aware of something else. A… shift.
Emily’s been gone for years now. Kate’s gone too, even if it’s temporary. And Richard’s leaving in a month, but I haven’t let myself think too hard about him yet.
The truth is people keep leaving. And when they do, you either grab on or you pretend you’re fine. I’ve always been a pretender. An actress, even in real life.
I’m still wearing my rehearsal clothes, so I excuse myself to go home and change. When I step out, the heat of the afternoon air stings. But what catches my attention is Richard, leaning on the railing in front of Lily’s.
“What are you still doing here? The game’s starting,” I tell Richard. “Are you hiding from Bon’s cookies too?”
He chuckles. “Something like that.”
I step up beside him, elbows on the railing. He’s wearing jeans and a shirt that looks like they should be washed. “You look like shit.”
“My flight got pushed up,” he says, still not moving out of the way. My stomach sinks.
If he’s leaving sooner than I thought, then I should probably tell him that I’m gonna miss him. Okay, I can say that. I think.
“Oh? When?” is all I manage to say. “Next week?”
“Tonight,” he replies, and I freeze.
“Oh.”
There are about twelve different things I could say. I’m gonna miss you, dipshit. Call me when you land. Stay in touch. Don’t forget about me. Try to forget about me and I’ll hunt you down.
Say anything, Haley.
“But Hales,” he starts, and I stop attempting to say what I want to say. “I need to tell you something before I go. I don’t know if I’ll return. It’s a pretty solid job. But I… I’ve been trying to figure out how to say this for years.”
The muscles in my shoulders go tense. “What are you talking about?”
“I’ve imagined this scenario to be much better, but… I only have a few hours left. I just need you to know…”
He finally looks at me, and it’s like every version of him I’ve ever known—awkward kid with the crooked smile, teenager who beat me at basketball on my own driveway, the guy who still shows up for my birthday every year—are all standing there at once.
“Richard. Spill it, you’re being such a baby,” I say.
“I like you, Haley. No, sorry, I love you. I’ve loved you for so long.”
The world tilts just a little, but I keep my face unreadable. Because I’m nothing if not a good actress. I stay quiet, trying to compose myself. “And you’re telling me this now because…?”
He swallows. “Because I didn’t want to leave without you knowing. Because I thought—”
“Thought what?” I cut in, sharper than I mean to be. “That you’d drop this ten hours before you leave and I’d… what? Magically fall into your arms? Give you some epic airport goodbye?”
His brows pull together, like he wasn’t prepared for me to bite back. “No, I just—Haley, I’m not trying to—”
“Make me your last-minute epiphany? Check me off your list before your big life starts somewhere else? What is it?” My voice is steady, but my hands curl tight around the railing.
“That’s not what this is,” he says quickly, almost tripping over the words. “I’m saying it now because I—because if I didn’t, I’d regret it for the rest of my life. And I thought maybe—”
“Save it,” I say.
“Haley, I—”
I hold up a hand. “Look, I don’t feel that way about you, Richard. And I’m not gonna pretend I do just so you can leave with a happy heart or whatever sappy shit you believe in.”
And that’s true. It’s true. I don’t love him. I don’t. I don’t. I don’t.
The game noise hums faint from inside, laughter spilling through the door when someone shouts about the score. My chest feels hot, my pulse loud in my ears, and I hate—hate—that it’s not just anger making it that way.
“Okay,” he says. “I should go.” His voice is quiet.
I take a step back. “Yeah. You should.”
And then I turn, forgetting all about having to change my clothes. But I have to go inside. I’m not going to watch the look on his face change any more than it already has.
The door to Lily’s is only a few feet away, but each step feels like I’m walking through syrup. I can still feel his eyes on my back.
Inside, the game commentary swells, people are laughing, someone’s arguing over a foul call. I grab a Coke off the table like nothing happened.
“Did I miss anything?” I ask the room.
“Nothing interesting,” Bon says.
On-screen, Kate squints at me. She has a face that is too good at reading people. Don’t, I think at her. Twin telepathy or something. Don’t be good at this right now. Don’t pick me apart now, Katherine.
We watch. I pretend to watch.
In my mind, though, I’m drafting rules:
Rule 1: Everyone leaves. That’s not a tragedy. You just move on.
Rule 2: You do not ask anyone to stay. You are not a dock. You are not a handcuff. You are a person who can carry her own groceries and hold her own doors open.
Rule 3: If someone confesses anything with a capital L in it, you do not faint, swoon, melt, or any of the bodily verbs this town is so fond of. You say thank you to the universe for the flattering information, then you return to regularly scheduled programming.
Rule 4: You do not, under any circumstances, draft ‘what if’ letters in your head. Burn them the second they try to write themselves.
Rule 5: No maybes. No someday. No soft future tense.
I tell myself it’s better this way. Clean lines.
No tangled threads. No “someday” stuffed under the bed like a shoebox of letters.
I don’t do maybes. I don’t do drafts of a life that require co-authors in the form of glasses-wearing lawyers who think they can just confess their love to me out of the blue then leave.
I don’t do cliffhangers.
And if my hands are shaking just a little when I take a sip of my drink, well—nobody has to know.