Chapter 10
Freddie was in his usual spot—staring at his phone, a small, hopeful smile playing around the corners of his mouth.
I’d done the same routine as always—roller coaster talk, Bryony, Ms. Mulaney—barely even paying attention to what I was saying, like I was an actor in a play that had run a hundred times.
Because I was focused on Freddie. I just wanted to get here, to him, to try and… what?
I had nearly reached him, but as I considered this question, I felt my feet slow, then stop. What was I actually going to do here?
There truly didn’t seem to be any way to salvage Eton Mess’s show tonight.
It wasn’t like I could procure a guitarist in time, and either Alfie got sick and the show was ruined, or Alfie sat it out and the show was ruined.
And as I turned this over in my mind, I thought about what Freddie had said—that maybe it was actually better not to have known what was going to happen.
If it was truly just food poisoning, maybe the band wouldn’t get fired for being unprofessional and walking off the stage.
Maybe letting them know what was coming, if all that was coming was bad, was actually just cruel.
I looked at Freddie now, his eyes wide as he read the email, like he was afraid to believe it was real.
There was a piece of me that wanted to walk up to him, start the explanation, begin our night together.
I wanted to eat a meal with him and learn new things to add to the list of Freddie facts and see if he’d come up with any new song lyrics.
I wanted to walk with him and see the light from the Ferris wheel play over his face and feel the butterflies in my stomach as I realized we were close enough to kiss.
But that’s all it would be.
It would be just a handful of hours, hours that he wouldn’t remember once they were over.
This was never, I realized like a punch in the gut, going to go anywhere.
I might feel like I was getting to know him better each time, but I was always just going to be the girl he’d met a few hours before.
There wasn’t any future here. Just a continuous fresh start.
It was like Freddie had pointed out—that this was what I did with everyone in my life. I started over—a new town, a blank slate. Leaving people behind, only to discover tonight—over all the tonights—that they hadn’t actually gone anywhere.
But as I looked at Freddie, the lock of hair falling over his forehead, I realized I didn’t want that anymore. I didn’t want any of this.
Freddie looked up from his phone and blinked when he saw me.
Which was understandable—I must have looked odd, standing frozen in front of him.
While everyone else was swirling around us, off to their next adventure, he and I were standing stock-still in the middle of the path.
For just a second, and against all logic, I hoped that maybe he might recognize me.
That somehow what we’d shared—even the fight we’d just had—would have carried through.
But then he just gave me a small polite smile, the kind you give to strangers. “Hi,” he said, a question in his voice, like he was wondering why I was staring at him. “Sorry…do we know each other?”
I looked at him, trying not to let him see what I was feeling, trying to cover up the fact that it felt like my heart was breaking. Then I took a breath and made myself reply. “No,” I finally said. “We don’t.”
And then I turned and walked away.