I swallow thickly. “So where does that leave us?”
“I think I need to figure out what I can handle and what I can’t. Until then, I think it’ll be easier for both of us if we’re not anywhere.”
“You mean if we’re not anything,” I clarify, my voice as tight as my hands going white on the wheel.
“Yeah,” she says faintly, opening the car door. “That’s what I mean.”
I watch Lilly leave. I sit there parked on the dirty street with needles in the backs of my eyes, and I watch her walk away. I watch the distance grow between us as the reality sinks in, deeper and deeper until the pain in my chest grows inside my body, leaching into my bones, and I’m aching from head to toe.
I don’t take losing well. I never could.
And I just lost more than I ever had.
CHAPTER THIRTY
LILLY
December 5th
The Mad Batter
Los Angeles, CA
Christmas is everywhere. It started showing up the day after I walked away from Colt. It was little things at first. Music in the stores. Decorations in windows. But now that we’re full on in December the city is bursting with cheer. Commercials are all set in snowy scenes where people meet in glowing houses wearing warm sweaters and carrying piles of packages. We’ve started serving hot apple cider. The store smells like cinnamon.
I love this time of year, but I haven’t been able to get into the spirit.
I haven’t been able to think straight since I last spoke to him.
I can’t stop to think about Colt or his eyes or his arms. His laugh. That smile of his that makes me angry and excited. Happy in a weird way that makes my head hurt. I keep waiting for a tabloid to show up with him on the cover kissing another girl. Giving her his time. His smile. It’s a hit I’m not sure I can take.
He hasn’t called and that sucks, but I haven’t called him either. I told him I need to figure out what I can handle and he’s giving me time and space to do that, but how the hell do I decide? How do I measure how much hurt I can stomach by being with him when it aches this badly being without him?
Even the paparazzi have disappeared. They followed him away, just like he said they would.
It’s been a month since I met him, but it feels impossibly longer. Probably because of that night we stayed up together, a single evening that felt like days. Or maybe it’s because we saw each other here at the bakery almost every day after. It feels sad coming in without him there waiting for me. I miss the smug look on his face and the sugary coffee warming his hands. The one that I could taste on his lips when he’d kiss me, long and deep. Exhaustively. Or when his lips would graze the top of my head, gentle and fleeting. Barely there but burning inside me.
Almost every night he asked me to come to his apartment, to stay with him, and every time I said no. Not yet. I don’t know what I was waiting for. Maybe this; the end. I must have seen it coming. I must have known it would go down this way, and by not having sex with him I was protecting myself. I was holding onto a ripcord, readying myself for the fall that I knew was coming.
“Or you were giving yourself an easy out,” Rona suggests starkly.
I pause with my hands pushed inside a big ball of dough. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means you gave yourself an easy way out,” she repeats plainly. “You always assumed it was going to end and by not having sex with him you were keeping yourself distanced. You assumed it would hurt less when he left if you’d never gone all in.”
“That’s… it’s not why I didn’t do—“
“I mean, seriously, why’d you break up with him? Because he’s famous and people want pictures of you with him? Of course they do! He’s Colt Avery. You knew that going into it, and be real, was it so awful that you really couldn’t handle it?”
“No,” I grind out, punching the dough roughly. “But it’s not about me. It’s about my dad and Michael. They don’t need that kind of attention.”
“Oh, come on. It was one time and they didn’t get a glimpse of either of them. And even if they had, what is that hurting? Your dad is a silver fox. The internet would love him.”
“What the fuck?” I demand.
Rona stares at me hard. “I will not apologize for finding your dad attractive.”
“Dude.”
“Or your brother.”
“Dude!”
“You knew something like Sunday was bound to happen at some point, and I think you were kind of hoping it would because it gave you a reason to bail before he could.”
I shake my head stubbornly, my throat closing tight around her words. They’re too tough to swallow. Too true to digest right now. “You’re wrong.”
“I’m not. You never fully committed, and you know it. You went into that with him assuming it was temporary.”
“So did he. He doesn’t do long term.”
“Are you sure about that?”