My heartbeat, which seconds ago had been racing, stuttered to a stop. I breathed deeply into my chest, trying to stay calm, trying to think. Emily didn’t respect panic.
I needed my New City York apartment to be a New York City fashion girl. It was the Carrie Bradshaw of it all! It was who I was. Bossi had been an unpaid internship, but it legitimized my fashion credentials and I leveraged that into a decent income through social media ads and sponsorships. But without Mom’s credit card, I definitely wouldn’t be able to afford to stay in Manhattan. Which I had to, as I needed to be within a short train or inexpensive rideshare to work. Being an intern meant long hours and making yourself available at a moment’s notice—all of which would be impossible from Rhode fucking Island.
“What if I come back, but I don’t go to Brown?”
The phone line was silent for a minute. With my toe, I smoothed a divot in the gravel that Kev had missed while raking.
“I’ll give you three months,” she said finally. “Come back, take the meeting, start planning for undergraduate next year. In the meantime, you may see what other fashion things you can pick up. If you’re not financially self-sufficient by the end of the year—calendar, not fiscal—I’ll sell the apartment and you’ll start at Brown. I think that’s reasonable.”
My stepdad said something affirmative in the background.
“You’re our daughter, Lyssa. Charles and I want you to be successful. Not be led about by your whims and end up selling gator T-shirts out of the back of a van in Tampa.”
“I thought you said my birth father was a Tampa tour guide?”
“Well, the feathers in his backwards baseball cap are many and varied,” she said, sounding almost wry. “But no daughter of mine is going to have a career that relies on what you can hawk on the side of the road, or convince an unsuspecting tourist to do. Do you understand me?”
I was beginning to.
She sighed. “Lyssa, can you imagine me in Florida? Of course not. But there was a time when I was convinced I wanted to live there. And I would have hated it. Your birth dad would have tried his best, but eventually he would have hated me too, for complicating his life with ideas and goals that didn’t fit in Florida. He loved me enough to say goodbye to me. He knew that my potential was too significant to waste. It truly is that simple.”
It was so fucking terrible when she was right.
I said a feeble farewell to her before going inside. I tried to be normal for the rest of dinner, but I ended up getting overwrought. Caroline had to remove me from the table and splash water on my face.
When we were in the bathroom I told her everything—about Mike, about my mom’s ultimatum. Caroline asked good questions, like what did I want to do, and what was my heart telling me, and I didn’t know how to answer her.
I liked Mike. I wanted to stay with Mike. I wanted to stay here. But my mom was right—I needed to figure out what I was going to do with my life. My plan couldn’t be a person, I had to have a thing. Since I was 14, that thing had been fashion. There was no way I could give all of that up for a man, that was silly—my mother would despise that even more than she despised fashion itself.
Besides, Mike had been very clear that he wanted the thing between us to be a secret from his town and his family, because being seen with me was bad for his rep. The only reason he’d changed his mind tonight was because his pitch flopped. His bigger, loftier goals had fizzled out, and I was the participation prize. If he’d gotten what he’d really wanted, I’d still be his dirty little secret.
His potential was too significant to waste.
And I wasn’t going to hold him back anymore.
I stared into Caroline’s eyes and remembered how many nights we’d spent in my apartment in New York, lying on our bunks, sharing our dreams of onstage stardom (her) and fashion notoriety (me). Going back to New York and giving fashion another try made the most sense—it was what I’d always said I wanted.
When Caroline and I announced to her family that I would be flying home in two days, I couldn’t look at Mike. I struggled to meet anyone’s eyes, actually.
While the news I would be leaving wasn’t a surprise to anyone who had been thinking ahead (which was probably everyone except for me and Mike), the suddenness was jarring. The Hollidays had all been so welcoming toward me. At dinner, when I’d mentioned how much I loved the potatoes, Dean gave me two spoonfuls. They’d even begun to tease me, which I now knew was how Kiwi people, especially Hollidays, showed affection. I loved seeing my man and my very best friend at the same table—or rather, I loved being at their table. And I liked Dean and Hannah and even Tessa—who was cuddly as a cactus and drunk by the time we all waved goodbye. And I loved Kev.
While Mike was fixing drinks earlier tonight, Kev had shown me the picture of Wanda he carried in his wallet. Caroline had her eyes. Mike had her wide grin.
I felt like a real Holliday when I found myself worrying over Kev’s limp and fussing over what he needed. I wanted all parents to approve of me, but especially Kev. And incredibly, this wasn’t even hard to get—he didn’t hold it over my head like a lofty and unattainable prize. Kev loved freely, and welcomed strays. I could tell by the way Hannah and Tessa acted like he was their dad too. Hell, even Dean did.
On our short drive back to his place, Mike didn’t say much.
He asked if I’d remembered my bag—yes, but only because I’d left it in the car in the first place—and the leftover boiled potatoes Kev had put in a container for me to take home. That was clutched in my lap.
At home—Mike’s home, he went inside without saying anything else. I trailed after him, miserable, but aware this situation was of my own making so I wasn’t allowed to be the saddest person about it.
I would miss the way Mike laughed. The way he made me feel. The way he teased me and everyone around him and threw himself wholeheartedly into things, voicing his opinion with his whole chest. And I would miss sitting in the passenger seat with his hand on my leg, miss him thrusting inside me, calling me Princess, and sharing orgasms. I would deeply miss feeling him come—he’d only come inside me the one time, and I wanted it again and again and again. I wanted to be filled with him, claimed as a Holliday.
But Emily Ludlow had put a pin in that balloon animal.
“Mike, will you come back so we can talk?” I asked the empty hallway.
“I don’t know, can we?” His voice from his room was muffled.
