31. Skylar
The pillow smelled wrong.
Skylar opened her eyes to a ceiling she recognized but hadn’t slept under in weeks.
The cracks in the plaster above her bed traced the same jagged map they always had, unchanged since August, but the cracks belonged to a different version of her.
A version who slept alone and preferred the arrangement.
Her body searched for warmth that wasn’t there.
The left side of the bed lay flat and cold, no arm draped across her waist, no steady breath stirring the hair at her nape.
The absence registered before the memory did, and for three merciful seconds, she existed in the gap between waking and knowing.
Then Senior Night slammed back.
Charlie’s face in the coaches’ office. The fraction of a second after the fury, when his mouth was still open and the color drained from his skin and his eyes tracked her fingers as they flew to her collarbone. Awareness blooming in his eyes.
Heat prickled behind her eyelids. She pressed her face into the pillow and breathed through the cotton until the urge to cry turned into a hard lump lodged at the base of her throat.
She used to be good at this. Before the weight of his arm tugging her closer at three in the morning when he was too asleep to pretend he didn’t need her.
Before the way he’d press his lips against the crown of her head mid-sentence, as though the gesture was punctuation.
Before the particular quiet of Saturday mornings, his thumbs moving across his phone screen while she read beside him, neither of them speaking because neither of them had to.
Before she’d committed the cardinal sin of needing someone and then let that someone detonate the need in her face.
The girl who’d posed with his son three months ago would have shrugged off a man’s cruelty the way she shrugged off everything: spine straight, chin up, keep moving. That girl had buried four family members and still made her shifts on time.
That girl didn’t exist anymore.
Outside, the world sat muted. Thanksgiving drawing students home to eat turkey and argue with relatives.
She’d stayed. The plan had been to spend the holiday with a polite dinner at Alumni House with Charlie’s father and then back to the condo for a weekend studying, the two of them discovering how to exist outside of the Dean’s deal.
But there was no sleeping in, no pancake breakfast, no sitting on the couch with her thigh pressed against Charlie’s. That dream had expired.
Poppy had invited her to North Carolina. Skylar had said no. She wanted to be alone. Being alone was the only posture she trusted her body to hold.
Days bled together and Skylar dragged herself out of bed for her shift at the diner. She refilled coffees and wiped down tables and kept her phone in her apron pocket, where the absence of its vibration pressed against her hip like a bruise.
Frank set a plate of eggs in front of her during the lull between breakfast and lunch and squeezed her shoulder when he walked past. The warmth of his palm through her shirt made her eyes sting, because the gesture was the kind of uncomplicated care she’d spent an entire semester accepting from a different man and calling the acceptance a weakness.
No texts. No calls.
She’d refused Brennan’s money, but swallowed the prophecy. Now the prophecy had fulfilled itself, and the cruelest part was that she couldn’t tell whether Charlie had proven his father right or whether she’d done the proving for him.
Saturday night, she sat trying to edit the last essay for her writing class but couldn’t absorb a single line. Unable to bear the silence, she picked up the phone and called her grandmother.
“It’s late, sweetheart.” The sound of the television faded.
“I…” She had no excuse for calling at this hour. “I have the last of the money for the panel replacement.”
“You earned that money.”
“The shop needs the panel more than I need the cushion.”
A long exhale on the other end. “It’s appreciated.”
Silence settled between them. A rustle on the line, her grandmother shifting in the old recliner.
“How’s Charlie?”
The composure she’d held through her shift at the diner cracked, a sob bubbling in her throat.
“Grams.” Skylar’s throat tightened. “I lost him.”
The television sound disappeared. “Tell me.”
Skylar opened up, about the camera, the laptop, the coffees and dinners she stopped counting weeks ago.
Brennan’s bribe at the gala, the money she’d refused but the fear she’d absorbed.
The credit card she’d reached for without thinking, and Kate’s face that surfaced when her fingers touched the plastic.
Senior Night. Charlie defending her to his father for the first time in his life.
Then destroying her with the same mouth that had just protected her.
“He said I don’t understand what surviving a father costs.” Tears stung her cheeks. “As if losing my family taught me nothing.”
Her grandmother waited until Skylar’s breathing steadied. “Was he right?”
The question landed sideways.
“What?”
“When he said you don’t understand what his father costs him. Was he right?”
“Grams, he used my family’s death to win an argument.”
“I’m not asking whether he was cruel. I’m asking whether the cruelty came from a place you recognize.”
Outside, a branch scraped the windowpane in the wind. Skylar pressed her forehead against her knees. The cotton of her sweatpants absorbed the tears.
“I’m supposed to be honoring Kate.” The confession tore loose from the place behind her ribs where she stored every obligation she didn’t dare speak aloud.
“I came here to earn a degree that she should have earned. Instead of doing that, I spent an entire semester falling for a boy with a trust fund and letting him buy me things and ignoring every instinct that told me rich people destroy what they touch.”
She wiped her face with her palm.
“Mom and Dad and Kate died because a wealthy family couldn’t be bothered to fix the wiring they knew about. I went and handed my whole heart to someone from the same world. I betrayed them, Grams. I betrayed all of them.”
Her grandmother exhaled, a long, deliberate breath.
“Your mother loved your father. Claire didn’t pick him because he was safe or familiar or the right tax bracket.
She picked him because he made her laugh until she couldn’t breathe and because he showed up every single day, even when showing up was hard.
Money didn’t kill your family, Skylar. Negligence killed your family.
Confusing the two will cost you more than any fire ever could. ”
The distinction settled into a space underneath Skylar's chest.
“You have spent years living for Kate. For your parents. For the version of yourself you decided they would approve of.” Her grandmother cleared her throat.
“Kate adored you. She would have teased you mercilessly about a quarterback, but she would have adored him. Your sister would have told you to stop being so scared and kiss him again.”
A sound escaped Skylar’s throat, half laugh, half sob.
“You didn’t survive that fire so you could live half a life.” Her grandmother spoke slowly. “You’re allowed to live your own life, Skylar. Be anything you want. Even if that means choosing a path other than being a photographer.”
The air left Skylar’s lungs. “What?”
The chair squeaked again. “Photography was your mother’s dream.
Someone had to carry what Claire left behind, and you were the only one still standing.
” A breath on the line, held and released.
“Is it really your dream too? Or is the camera another way of living for a dead woman instead of living for yourself?”
Skylar opened her mouth. No words came.
“Ask yourself what you truly want. Not what Kate would have wanted. Not what your parents would have approved of. What you want. Then choose the thing, even if the thing is terrifying, even if the thing has a trust fund and a father who writes checks to make problems disappear. Choose it because it is yours.”
The tears came quieter now, leaking past defenses she no longer had the energy to maintain.
Kate’s face stared out from the photograph on the desk, twelve years old and permanent, and for the first time since the fire, Skylar allowed herself to separate the love from the obligation. Kate was her sister. The scholarship was her own.
Sunday crawled. Skylar woke with swollen eyes and a headache lodged behind her temples.
She folded his hoodie and set the fabric on the pillow beside hers.
Soon the garment might not carry Charlie’s scent at all, and the proof that he had been real would exist only in the photographs on a camera he gave her and the words on a laptop bought with money he loaned her.
At nine-fifteen, the front door opened.
Poppy dropped a duffel bag, kicked off her shoes, and padded to Skylar’s bedroom, her gaze moving around the room. “You look terrible.” She leaned against the doorframe. “Have you even left this room all weekend?”
“I went to the diner.”
“To work, not to live. Those are different things.” Poppy crossed her arms. “You stopped texting me back two weeks ago. I let it go. Told myself you were happy and didn’t need me underfoot.
” Her chin lifted. “Then Grant called.” Something crossed her face, there and gone.
“He wouldn’t give me specifics. Just said something happened after the game and I should get here. So here I am. Is this about Charlie?”
Skylar slid her knees tighter against her chest. “He defended me to his father. Then he turned the same words on me.” She relived the conversation after the football game for Poppy.
“I’m sitting here trying to figure out whether I’m devastated because he did something cruel, or because he proved that I was right to never let anyone in. ”
Poppy crossed the room and settled onto the bed beside her. “Which answer scares you more?”
“What do you mean?”
“If you’re devastated because he was cruel, that means he matters, and mattering is something you can work with. But if you’re devastated because he confirmed your thesis about people, then you were never going to let this work, and the cruelty is just the excuse you were waiting for.”
Skylar turned her face away. “That’s not fair.”
“It’s exactly fair.” Poppy didn’t blink.
“I’ve watched you run from this man since September.
The way you told me the night you slept together was a mistake before I’d even finished asking how you were.
The ‘friends’ label you strapped on like body armor.
You’ve been building the case for leaving since the day you met him. ”
The accuracy of the inventory stung worse than the accusation.
“Yet for you, he stayed.” Poppy held up a hand before Skylar could interrupt. “Every Wednesday at the diner. The trip to Ironwood. Do you think he took the deal with the Dean just to cover for Wyatt?” Her eyes locked on Skylar’s. “He wanted to spend time with you.”
Skylar’s thumb found the hollow at the base of her throat.
“The whole time I was with him, I never got below the surface. That easy laugh, the charisma, the right thing to say at the right time. He was charming. He was kind. It dazzled me at first. But not once did he let me see anything real.” Her hand closed over Skylar’s wrist. “I have seen more genuine feeling from Charlie in the moments I’ve watched him with you than in the entire time I dated him.
That is a man who found the one person he trusts enough to fall apart with.
He chose wrong in that office. But the reason he chose wrong is because you are the only person in his life where the walls come down. ”
Skylar stared at Poppy. The tears she’d spent days rationing spilled over.
“He has to own what he said.” Poppy released her wrist. “Every word. If he tries to skip the actual accountability, you send him back until he does the work. But that is a different conversation than the one you’re having with yourself right now.”
“He hasn’t called.” Her arms crossed over her stomach, holding herself together. “A week, Poppy. Not a text or a call. Brennan told me at the gala that Charlie’s girlfriends have expiration dates. I think mine just passed.”
“Did you call him?”
The question landed like a stone dropped into still water. “No.”
“So you’re sitting here deciding the relationship is over based on a silence you’re equally responsible for.
” Poppy tilted her head. “A relationship has two people in the room, Skylar. You don’t get to wait for him to prove he’s coming back while you hide behind a locked door.
You have to decide what you want. Then you have to ask for it. ”
The echo of her grandmother’s words rang beneath Poppy’s.
Choose your own life. Stop living for the dead.
The two women in her life who saw her most clearly had looked at the same wreckage and arrived at the same conclusion from opposite directions: her grandmother through permission, Poppy through confrontation.
Poppy stood and collected the duffel bag from the hallway. “The only question is whether you’ll meet him halfway or spend the rest of the semester proving your wound right.”
The silence Poppy left behind pressed against Skylar’s skin, settling into the hollow where every excuse used to live.
On her desk, the lamp cast a circle of light across the camera and the laptop and the two framed photographs that had held her heart, her purpose. One of a mother who taught her to see truth and the other of a sister who taught her to be brave.
The girl who walked onto this campus, built walls and called the construction survival. The woman in this bed reached for the hoodie, buried her nose in the fading grass scent, and chose.