When the SUV showed up at the curb, Gabe turned for one last glimpse of the houses where he’d spent the majority of his time from ages six to eighteen.
When he’d come back a week earlier, the sense of coming home had scared him.
He wasn’t afraid of that feeling anymore. Not when his future had become so much scarier than his past.
Pulling out his phone, he snapped a quick picture of the houses. Then he got in the car and began the trip back to his real life.
Chapter 23
Through the living room window, Michelle saw Gabe get in a car and leave. He didn’t come back over to say goodbye.
Some things never change, she thought bitterly.
After cleaning up in the bathroom, Michelle returned to the desk to wipe it down and right all the things she and Gabe had displaced during their frantic lovemaking. She collected all the pens from the floor, closed and stacked her notebooks, and repositioned her laptop back in the center of the desk.
The Pros and Cons list was ripped up and flushed down the toilet, never to be spoken of again.
Tapping the touch pad to wake up the laptop, she sat down and moved all the files related to the Agility campaign into their shared folder, then moved them off her laptop onto a USB stick, which she tossed in her dad’s drawer.
Before she could talk herself out of it, she invoiced Agility. And added a 20 percent cancellation fee.
She’d just sent the email when she heard Ava’s voice calling for her.
“Down here,” Michelle yelled. She shut the laptop and went upstairs.
Ava was in the kitchen unloading cans of chickpeas from a canvas tote. Four bottles of wine already sat on the counter.
“Jasmine’s on her way,” Ava reported, putting the food processor together. “There’s traffic, so it might take her a little while to get here from Brooklyn.”
Michelle climbed onto one of the high chairs stationed at the counter. She didn’t sit in them often, because her legs were just barely long enough to rest her feet on the rungs, but she wanted the comfort and familiarity of watching Ava in the kitchen.
Ava plugged the processor in, then grabbed the corkscrew and opened a bottle of red. She retrieved three glasses from the cabinet, poured wine into two, and pushed one across the counter to Michelle.
“Here. We can wait to talk until Jasmine gets here, if you want.”
“Thanks. I don’t want to go through it twice.” Michelle raised the glass and took a sip.
“Oh, there was a package for you by the door.” Ava handed Michelle a cardboard tube.
Michelle took it and glanced at the label. “Wow, this got here fast.”
“What is it?”
Michelle didn’t want to tell her. But she was trying to change, trying to let her cousins in.
Even if it meant they saw her for the sentimental sap she was.
“Right after we graduated, I made Gabe a photo collage of the two of us. A memento since I’d be away at school.” She turned the tube over in her hands but didn’t open it. “Thisweekend I got the idea to make a new one, using the photos we’ve taken here, to replace that one.”
What a stupid, ridiculous idea. She’d made the collage on her phone during the drive back from the quinceañera, and ordered it on the spot. She hadn’t expected it to get here so soon, yet here it was.
And Gabe was already gone.
Michelle passed the tube to Ava. “Throw it out.”
“I want to see it.”
Michelle shook her head. “I don’t. Just toss it.”
