Chapter 41
Carly
I didn’t think walking away would feel like this.
I thought maybe there would be relief in it.
Some clean, sharp snap of dignity, or some righteous little flare in my chest that said, good, you chose yourself.
But I feel like I left my ribs on the floor of Zoe’s coffee shop and walked home with nothing protecting my heart but skin.
Zoe and I talked until I could breathe again, until I was able to down water, until I fell asleep slouched on the couch.
I haven't really moved since, still in the same leggings I fell asleep in, staring at the television while it plays something I'm not watching.
The volume is low. The apartment smells like coffee and the vanilla candle Zoe lit last night.
I haven’t cried yet this morning. That feels like progress, but then I realize I also haven’t felt much of anything.
Zoe is in the little kitchen, moving around quietly. She asked everything last night. What happened, what he said, what I said, whether I was sure, whether I wanted her to call him, whether I wanted wine, tea, a murder weapon, or all three.
I talked until my throat hurt.
She’s not pushing me this morning. She just keeps existing near me in that careful way people do when they love you and don’t know where to put their hands.
“I have a job interview in Colorado Springs,” I say quietly. I saw the email when I woke up, stared at it for ten minutes straight.
The clink of Zoe’s spoon against her mug stops. For a few seconds, that is the only response. But she turns around slowly, holding her coffee with both hands. “What?”
I keep looking at the TV. A woman on-screen is laughing too hard at something a man said. It seems fake. Everything seems fake. “A design job,” I say. “I applied yesterday. They emailed me back a few hours ago.”
Zoe doesn’t move. “Carly.”
“I’m going tomorrow.”
Her feet pad softly across the floor, and a second later, the cushion beside me dips under her weight. She doesn’t touch me. I appreciate that more than I can say.
“Are you sure?” she asks carefully.
I let out a tiny laugh, but it has no humor in it. “No.”
Her mouth tightens.
“But I’m going anyway.”
She looks down into her mug, like maybe my future is floating somewhere between the coffee and the oat milk. “Colorado Springs isn’t another apartment across town,” she says. “That’s… far, Carly.”
“I know.”
“Not impossibly far. I know it’s only, like, an hour and a half,” she adds quickly, because Zoe is Zoe and she can’t stand the idea of making something worse once she’s said it. “But far enough that it changes things.”
“That’s kind of the point.”
She stares at me.
I pull the blanket tighter around my lap even though I’m not cold.
“If I stay here, I’ll keep looking for him everywhere.
At the cafe. At the grocery store. Every time I have to pass Sparkks.
Every Aston Martin will make me feel like I’m about to throw up.
Every little girl laughing in public will make me think of Penelope. ”
My voice catches on her name, but there are no tears. Not right now, at least. Just the crack in the wall where they might come through later.
Zoe’s face folds. “Oh, babe.”
I shake my head once, fast, because if she comforts me too gently, I will disintegrate all over her secondhand couch. “I can’t stay in Boulder and pretend I’m fine,” I say. “I can’t go back to Sparkks. I can’t be his nanny. I can’t be… whatever I was.”
For a second, I see Penelope’s pillow fort. Pizza sauce on her cheek. Grayson watching us from the other side of the couch with that soft look he always tried to hide.
Then I see him at the wedding, eyes hard, voice cold, deciding I was the kind of person who could fake everything.
“I just need to be away from it all.”
“You won’t be able to just nope out of that easily if you change your mind.”
“I know.”
“You could try to talk to him again,” she says, very carefully.
“No. He only talked to me because you all trapped us in a coffee shop and made it happen.”
Her mouth opens, then closes.
“I know you meant well,” I add, because I do. “I know Cole meant well. Maddox too. And he said the right things. He did. He was honest, and I’m glad he was, but…”
I stare at my hands. They look weirdly normal for hands that shook all night.
“But he only showed up because someone dragged him there.”
Zoe exhales.
“I needed him to choose it,” I say, and this time my voice is smaller. Worse. “Not because everyone told him to. I needed him to come after me because losing me mattered enough for him to move on his own.”
The apartment goes very still.
“He let me leave,” I whisper.
Zoe’s eyes shine, and she looks away for a second. I hate that. I hate making her sad. I hate all of this.
“He let me walk out,” I say. “And maybe that’s unfair. I told him I couldn’t do it, and maybe he was trying to respect that. I don’t even know anymore. I just know I needed something bigger than an apology we had to be cornered to produce.”
Zoe nods slowly, her throat working. “I understand.”
She says it like it costs her something.
“I hate it,” she adds, voice thick. “But I understand.”
I force a smile because if I don’t, I’ll do something worse, like ask her to tell me I’m wrong, or ask her to call him, or ask her to make one decision for me because every choice I make feels like stepping off a roof and hoping the ground is made of cotton.
“It’s just an interview,” I say.
Zoe nods again. “Right. Just an interview.”
I look back at the TV. The laughing woman is gone now. Some commercial plays instead, bright and loud and stupidly cheerful.
Inside me, everything is quiet. Not peaceful quiet, but the kind that comes after a car wreck, after an engine explodes and there’s ringing in your ears and you can’t hear the screams or sirens.
I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing. I don’t know if leaving is strength or fear.
I only know that if I stay, I’ll spend every day hoping Grayson Sparkks finally decides I’m worth fighting for, and I can’t survive like that.