39. Taylor
Chapter 39
Taylor
T o a stranger, it might look like her room is still full, but Ains and I both know she’s missing. The chair in the corner is missing her favorite sweater. The air is a bit too still, the lingering smell of incense too faint.
We find Marisol in the kitchen.
“It wasn’t my place to tell you.”
“How long have you known?” I ask, frustrated but trying to keep my cool. It’s not Marisol I’m upset with, even if she could have told me at any time.
“My guess is about the same amount of time you’ve known,” is her predictably infuriating answer.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
She sighs and crosses her arms over her chest. “You knew this was a possibility, Taylor. You two haven’t talked about it because you both wanted to pretend it wasn’t happening. She didn’t want to hurt you.”
“What are you talking about?” Ainsley chimes in from beside me, looking convincingly confused.
Marisol regards him with narrowed eyes. “Her internship. ”
“Oh. But I thought she was applying to places in Seattle,” he says, and I actually start to believe he didn’t know.
“She was. But she was also top of her class,” Marisol tells him. “And she could be snatched up by one of the big New York publishing houses in an instant.”
“But she never heard back from them,” I argue, even as I know it’s a lost cause.
“Not even you are that stupid, Taylor.”
“Okay, let me get this straight,” Ainsley cuts back in. “She got a publishing internship interview in New York and got on a plane without even saying anything? Why?”
Marisol speaks only to me when she answers. “Because she knew you were too committed to your albatross of a house to choose her.”
Ainsley turns on me. “Is that true, man? You would have let her go for your parent’s house?”
“I don’t know,” I answer honestly.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” he shakes his head, clearly disgusted with me. “Well good thing it doesn’t matter anymore, huh? Grab your shit, I’m calling a plane.”
I tear my gaze away from glowering at Marisol, as if she was the problem, to sneer at him. “You can’t just call a plane.”
But he already has.
“That’s right. Yes. Forty-five minutes will be fine. Everett, yes. Great. Thank you.”
He hangs up and turns to me, incredulous. “I told you to get your shit, man.”
And, because I’m more ready than anything to just let go and let someone else be in charge. Because I literally have nothing else to lose but her. Because I’m seeing my life and my stupid, selfish choices in the light of truth for the first time in…possibly ever. I do just that.