I run my thumb over his knuckles. “I let the phone run out of battery and threw it in the ocean a few days later. I wanted to throw myself inside, too, but didn’t have the guts. I thought we shouldn’t be together after what happened. I felt so guilty. Our relationship was the reason she died. It sickened me to think I’d just continue as usual after she was gone. Go on dates, have sex, laugh, live . . . all those things. They seemed too trivial after what happened. And, yeah, school was a part of it. Going to college was a way to better my future. I didn’t deserve that. I deserved to be stuck in place, just like Mom was going to forever be stuck at age forty-three. So I dropped out. Cut all ties with Pippa and all my other friends.”

“Punishing yourself,” Joe comments.

I down another shot of tequila. The edges of my vision begin to blur.

“I decided to move to Boston. In retrospect, it’s easy to see why. I wanted to run into you, even if subconsciously. I fed myself some crappy story. That Boston was a great market for jobs. That if I ever decided to go back to school, there were lots of colleges in the area. It was also far enough from home that Dad and Renn couldn’t bulldoze their way into an intervention. I was free to destroy myself without interruption.”

Joe doesn’t say anything. He just listens. And God, it is so good to talk to him again. His gaze is like the sun. It gives me warmth and strength.

“But quickly, I realized that the city was too big, too gray, too rough. More than anything, it reminded me of you. And the pain of losing you, on top of losing my mom, was just too much. I couldn’t take it. I moved to Salem. It seemed like a good place to get my artistic mojo back. Spoiler alert: even Salem didn’t help. My art died with my mom.”

“I don’t think your art died,” Joe says cautiously. “I think it’s still inside of you, pounding on the door, waiting to get out. You’re locking it in, because your art is a way to get ahead. To achieve things.”

We hold each other’s gaze before I pour him another shot. “Your turn to tell me what went on with you these last six years.”

A ghost of a smile touches his lips. “Well, as you probably pieced together, I went to Europe because Dom had just received his all-clear after another cancer scare.”