Chapter 3
Katie
I spent the next morning where I spent most of my mornings: at the cycling studio a few blocks from my apartment. My neighborhood
offered virtually every workout imaginable, and I’d tried them all twice. Still, when it came down to it, nothing left me
as nameless, brainless, or separated from myself as pedaling on a bicycle to nowhere for two out-of-my-budget, electropop-blaring
rides in a row.
After class, I showered, slathered myself in bronzing moisturizer, put glitter on my eyelids and shimmer on my lips, then
twisted my hair into two topknots secured by heart-shaped clips. I grabbed my stuff from my locker, slipped out with my head
down to avoid my usual half hour of small talk, and made my way to the café, calves still quaking and heart still shaking.
Lola was outside, inspecting a crate of oat milk.
“He’s back,” she said.
“What?”
“The boy. Tyler. He’s been here all morning.”
Something wet and bitter pushed up my throat. I closed my eyes and swallowed, forcing whatever it was back down. I hadn’t
eaten since I’d scarfed a stale muffin for lunch yesterday, and between last night’s wine and zero minutes of sleep, my two
hours of maniacal exercise, and the whole surprise, Tyler-is-back-in-your-life scenario, everything was spinning, sour, and
scraping at me, inside and out.
I opened my eyes. Through the picture window—Georgina’s, it announced in hand-painted cursive, emerald and white—was Tyler McNally, all crooked lips and furrowed brow and weathered cap. He was just sitting there, tapping his fingers on the table in the café’s farthest, coziest corner.
“I can’t.”
“Katie,” Lola said. “If you don’t want to work with him, that’s totally valid. I understand, I really do. And I am one hundred
percent on your side. But you still need to go in there and handle this like a professional adult. Either go talk to him or
find a way to explain it to Selma. You’re, like, catatonic.”
“Fine,” I said, pulling open the door. I took a deep breath, pushed down my shoulders, and stepped inside. “I’ll deal with
it.”
Tyler stood up as soon as I entered.
“Katie . . .”
“I don’t want to see you, ever.”
Now it was Tyler’s turn to close his eyes. “Katie, listen,” he said. “I didn’t know it was you. I spent all night looking
for another job. I’ve been looking for months, I swear. It’s just I’m a teacher now. I teach English, and I don’t get a paycheck
until September, and this pays twice as much as anything else out there. It’s impossible to find anything seasonal, and I
have all these manuscripts I can’t sell, and I lost my agent last year, and—”
“I cannot begin to explain how little I care about you getting dropped by your agent.”
He gulped, then took a step toward me. I took two back.
“What happened after the funeral,” he said. “You have to believe me, I never meant—”
“I don’t want to talk about it. It doesn’t matter. I’ve moved on. I just . . . I don’t want to do this. I can’t have you here. This is my world. This is my life.”
Tyler’s mouth was twitching. His eyes were soft, and his palms were turned. For a moment, I almost fell right back into those
arms, into those hands, but it was just a flash. It was just the old me, imagining a version of him that was never there at
all.
I clutched my elbows as he began to reply. “If you’re wondering,” he said, “why I never reached out. If you’re wondering why
I disappeared, why I—”
“I don’t wonder about you, Tyler. I don’t think about you at all. Not every girl on this planet sits around and wonders about
you. It’s been eight fucking years. I’m an adult, and I have a life now. A life I actually like. This job matters to me. And
I’d appreciate it if you’d email Selma, bow out, and let me have this one good thing.”
“Okay,” he said.
“O-okay?”
“Yeah,” he said, and just like that, he closed his laptop, thanked Lola for the coffee, and was gone. Before the door swung
shut behind him, he muttered something. I was lightheaded and dehydrated, and everything was still upside down and strobing
and sour, and I wasn’t sure what he’d said or why he’d said it or whether he’d meant for anyone else to hear it, but it didn’t
matter anyway, because all I’d picked up was a single word.
All I picked up was:
You.