Page 82 of Wish Lists and Road Trips

“Brit—”

“Take the out, Nicky!”

“What?” His hands dropped to his side. “Brit, please. That’s not what this is.”

“Prove it. Come with me.”

“You’re being irrational.”

Irrational.Silly. Ridiculous.So that was what he thought of me despite everything he’d said. Hurt and confusion wove together in a noose to choke me. “You said you wanted to do this forever.”

“I meant it.”

“Just not now.”

“It’s not like that. It’s . . .” He squeezed the back of his neck. “Don’t do this, Brit. I don’t have a choice here.”

“I’m sorry you think that, Nick, because everyone has a choice. I don’t know who told you that you were the exception to that, but they were wrong.”

“Like you had a choice with Sean?”

I froze. “What about it?”

“What was it you called me? A self-made martyr. Hell, you were going to marry a guy just to make your dad happy. If that isn’t martyrdom, I don’t know what is.” We were chest to chest now, his height forcing him to look straight down. “You understand this better than you’re pretending.”

I glared at him. “I didn’t tell you that so you could throw it back in my face, but while we’re at it, were you just pretending to understand what your brother was trying to teach you? I mean, for fuck’s sake, Nick. It took what? Two days for you to go right back to being Mr. Play It Safe.”

He laughed unpleasantly. “God, you’re just like him, you know? Do whatever feels good at the time. It doesn’t work like that in the real world.”

“In therealworld? I’m standing right here, in the real world, giving you the option to take what you say you want. But you can’t do it. At least I fought for what I wanted. I might have lost it all but at least I didn’t just give up.”

“Jesus, I’m not giving up on anything. I’m just asking for more time, Brit. Why can’t you just give me that?”

“Will it even make a difference?” I crossed my arms over my chest, chin trembling but tipped. “What are you going to do, Nicky? Blow up your whole life for a girl you’ve known a week? We both know you’re not that guy.”

He blinked at me in stunned silence but he didn’t make any move to correct me, to tell me hewasthat guy. To promise me the things he’d promised last night. He just stood there.

How could I have been so stupid? I’d let myself believe that Nick and I had this cosmic connection, some unflappable bond, because what? We’d spent a week together stuck in various confined spaces and then we’d ended up sleeping together?

But that was just it. Six days wasn’t a long time in thereal world, but when you were sharing space and secrets the way we were, it felt like an eternity. We’d been trying to get home for almost a week—a week to get from Houston to New York! The snowstorm, the car getting towed, the train running into atree! How could I not believe the universe was trying to tell us something?

God. That thought was some, it was sickening.

Nick needed comfort and distraction. He’d been at the top of a roller coaster of emotion when I met him. Now he was safe at the bottom and he didn’t need me anymore.

“Don’t leave me, Brit,” he whispered.

I shook my head. “No, Nick. Don’t spin it. You’re leaving me. You’re the one with no choices.”

“Brit . . .” I watched every emotion cross his face—sorrow, anger, exhaustion. He started to say something then stopped. A tiny ray of hope dawned in my chest, then he ran a hand over his face. When he looked at me again, his expression was flat, like a switch had been flipped. “Maybe you’re right.”

I turned on my heel and started running.

When Alex died, I got a lot of cards in the mail. Family members, friends I went to school with, even business contacts—everyone wanted to tell me how sorry they were through canned messages they’d bought at the grocery store. I skimmed them and tossed them in the recycling, but there was one that stuck with me. It was from my high school English teacher, and the outside had a picture of a full moon hanging low over the ocean. Inside it said:Grief is a wave, ebbing and flowing, and all you can do to survive it is to learn how to swim.

If that were true, I was drowning.

The front door to my apartment stuck from the constant frost heaves and I gave it a cathartic shove with my shoulder, dropping my bags on the hardwood floor. The thunk echoed through the stark, clinically tidy rooms. It might as well be another hotel room, it seemed so empty and sterile. A realtor could show this place today and no one would believe anyone was living here. It made sense in a twisted, metaphorical insult kind of way. Could I call anything I’d done before I met Brit living?

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