Chapter 21 Wants, Needs
Wants, Needs
If there’s a day Sage would not want to live over again, it’s January first. And yet as she stands on the curb and stares up at her apartment, the LA sun warm on her skin, she’s forced to reckon with the fact that she still has eight more hours before the calendar finally puts this one to bed.
Time zones. They’re a real bitch.
She trudges into the building, exhaustion heavy in her bones as she leans against the mirrored wall of the elevator and waits to get to her floor.
The subletter had moved out before Christmas, and Emerson had let her know the apartment was in okay shape this morning, when Sage had sent a monotone voice message to the group chat explaining what had happened and that she didn’t want to talk about it.
She’d hardly slept last night. She gave up trying around 6 AM London time.
There’d been some momentary panic when she realized her suitcase was in Theo’s room, but when she’d crept out of the guest room, she’d found him at the bar in the kitchen, dark circles under his eyes and a cold cup of tea in hand.
“You’re leaving.”
It wasn’t a question, but a confirmation. When she’d nodded, he’d simply slid off the stool, grabbed his keys, and left the flat.
It had cost Sage a fortune to change her flight again, and between that and the fucking dress, her credit card is under significant duress, but she can’t find it in herself to panic—not when she arrives at her door and is so relieved to be home she could cry.
She’s been trying to keep it together—trying to keep her tears at bay until she’s back here, and even now that she is, she’s afraid of what’s going to happen if she lets herself feel this hurt.
It’s too deep. Too heavy. Too strong.
She fiddles with the keys, jiggling the lock that sticks, and then she’s inside, her lungs releasing as the door shuts behind her.
It smells like home—like caramel candles and dry California air—and she has half a mind to sink down to the floor right there in the entryway, but she pauses when she spots two figures on the couch.
“Welcome home,” Emerson says softly.
“Good flight?” Margot asks.
Sage stares at her friends, her keys hanging loosely in her hand.
She takes in the place again, sees that they’ve cleaned it from top to bottom, erasing any trace of the subletter.
They’ve lit her favorite candles and opened her favorite window and have a bottle of wine and three glasses waiting on the coffee table, and suddenly Sage is crying big, fat, ugly tears, her keys clattering to the floor as her best friends rush for her.
Their arms form a fortress around her as she leans against them and sobs.
“We’ve got you, babe,” Emerson whispers, her lips pressed right above Sage’s ear.
“Always,” Margot promises.
So Sage lets herself go—lets herself crumble and break.
She lets the hurt sweep her under.
But Emerson and Margot are there, making sure she doesn’t drown.
It’s Margot who gets her to eat.
It’s Emerson who gets her to talk.
She’s silent as Sage fills in the gaps, from Christmas to Heathrow to Archie to New Year’s Eve. She doesn’t say a word until Sage is talked out, and even then, she’s uncharacteristically quiet.
They’re on Sage’s couch two days later, cuddled together the way they used to in college when one of them had a particularly horrible day: Sage with her head on a pillow in Emerson’s lap while her friend runs soothing fingers through her hair.
“Do you really think he wanted you to come to Vibe because he didn’t take the role?” Emerson finally asks.
Sage has had two and a half days to think about it.
The picture of the dedication page of her book. The voice text. I wasn’t surprised to see the crowd.
She’s had sixty hours to remember it all. Three thousand six hundred minutes.
She’d gotten there in the first sixty-two.
“No,” she finally confesses. “No, I don’t.”
It gets harder before it gets easier. And even then, there are periods of it being harder again. Sage tries to throw herself into some semblance of a routine—writing, exercising, cleaning, distracting—but Theo’s words float back to her anyway.
When she’s scrubbing the stovetop for the fifth time that week, it’s buried under the weight of opinions that don’t matter.
When she’s shredding her first act to meet Marie’s edits, it’s want everyone to love you.
When she’s pedaling for her life in spin class, Margot shooting her worried looks from the bike beside her, it’s wrote me off the moment you met me.
And when she sits down for a video call with Anna in the exact same spot she was in three months ago, it’s running away from everything real.
It’s been two weeks since she came home, and beneath her hurt and her anger is a clarity so sharp that it stings.
Theo was right.
She doesn’t want Theo to be right.
“Oh, babe,” Anna sighs when the call connects. “You look awful.” Sage lets out a broken laugh, because it’s so Anna to say something so brutally blunt and yet make it sound like concerned care.
“I feel awful,” she admits. She scrubs a hand across her face. Tears are already pricking dangerously behind her eyelids, and she thought she’d cried herself out, but apparently there are hidden depths to her tear ducts that she didn’t know about.
Anna frowns, and there’s so much worry in her gaze—even through the computer screen—that Sage has to bury her head in her hands to stop from breaking down entirely.
“What do you need, Sage?”
What do you want, Collins?
She wants to stop burying herself in work to avoid the tangles in her own mind. She wants to know her worth isn’t connected to what she does. She wants … time.
Sage sniffles, her shoulders rolling back as she lifts her head and takes a steadying breath. “I need to push the deadline for the sequel.” Her voice trembles as she says it, but she keeps her chin lifted, her gaze direct.
Anna blinks. “Okay.”
Sage waits for her to continue, but nothing but a crackling silence follows.
“O … okay?”
“Okay,” Anna repeats. There’s a slight furrow to her brow that indicates she’s not exactly sure why Sage is shaking like a leaf. “Did you have a date in mind?”
“Um,” Sage says, and her voice trembles harder. “I didn’t … I didn’t actually get that far.”
Vicious relief is slipping down her spine, and it’s making her feel a bit dizzy. A traitorous tear slips down her cheek, and it has Anna leaning forward to peer more closely at her through the camera.
“Sage,” Anna says softly. “It’s just a deadline.”
“I know,” Sage sniffs. “I … I just feel like I’m letting people down, but I—” She cuts herself off as more tears begin to flow. Gives herself time to breathe. To collect her thoughts.
To remember what she wants. What she needs.
“I want the time,” she finally finishes. “I need the time.” Not just to give the book room to breathe, but to give herself a moment to breathe. To adjust to the changes she’s made over the last year. To learn how to rebuild her armor in a way that doesn’t suffocate her.
“Then we’ll get you the time,” Anna says. “I’ll set up a call with Marie and we’ll figure it out. These things happen, Sage. It isn’t the end of the world.”
Sage nods and tries to believe her.
“Sage?” Anna presses.
“Hmm?”
“I’m proud of you.”
Sage lets out a wet laugh, and god, of course Anna says the things she doesn’t know she needs to hear until she hears them.
“Thank you,” she says, voice thick with emotion.
And then, because she means it …
“I’m proud of me, too.”
Sage addresses the deadline first by sheer necessity.
There’s the emotional call with Anna, followed by the call with Marie and the PR team, and the social media announcement about the sequel’s delay, and the disappointed comments that are drowned out by the overwhelming support of her readers as they assure her they’ll wait.
Take your time, one of them says on her post. We want to read the version you’re proud of.
It’s terrifying, and relieving, and a lot—enough that she sets up regular sessions with her therapist again.
Sessions that are long overdue.
It gives her the momentum she needs. The momentum, and the headspace—a blessing and a curse. In the end, though, it’s an easy choice, deciding which hurdle to tackle next.
She boards a flight to Seattle.
To Noah.
Seattle at the end of January is a lot like London, Sage thinks, as she takes in the cloud cover that completely obscures the rest of the city from view.
There’s a constant drizzle of rain, and it wets the window she gazes out of, the hum of Noah’s electric fireplace the only noise aside from the brewing coffee.
There’s a twist in her chest as she thinks of those last few days of December, but it’s not as painful as it’s been this last month. There are moments when it is—when her lungs tighten and her eyes go hazy with tears. But slowly, it’s becoming less acute. Less overwhelming.
Maybe it’s because she’s had so much else to contend with.
Noah joins her at the window, his head tilting as he takes in the endless stretch of gray. “Cecelia loves it when it’s like this,” he muses. His cheek caves in in the way it does when he doesn’t agree with something. “I think it’s depressing as fuck.”
Sage huffs a laugh. “Cecelia is far too bubbly to let things like the weather affect her.”
Her sister-in-law had been up and at ’em first thing this morning, all bright smiles and breezy excuses about needing to run errands.
Sage knows she’s trying to give her and Noah some space so they can talk in private.
Sage had gotten in late last night, late enough that they’d silently agreed to table any heart-to-hearts until they were both rested and re-caffeinated.