That’s what death does to you—it eats you alive until you’re a hollow shell of a human who lives in a limbo of grief and guilt and denial.

It’s been almost three years and I don’t think I’ve ever said it out loud.

My mom is dead.

Three words. Sharp as a knife. They cut right through me.

Much like the sound of my phone does.

It’s Joey. If I don’t pick up, she’ll keep calling.

“Remember what we talked about before I left?” she says before I can say hello.

“I’m not setting the apartment on fire.”

“You don’t have to actually do it,” she says. “We’re just pretending. I would never ask you to commit arson. Unless it involved Levi. But even then, I’d want to do it myself.”

My stomach twists at the mention of his name. It’s bad enough I have to hear it on the news and read it in the papers. I don’t want to listen to Joey go on and on about how she wants to drench him in gasoline and set him on fire.

“Speaking of… how’s everything going?”

“It’s… going?” I roll onto my back, bringing the fleece blanket up to my chin. “I don’t know. It’s too hard to get through all the articles. I don’t know much more than the rest of the world.”

“And how are things with Asher?”

Maybe I should drench myself in gasoline and set the apartment on fire.

I mean, it’s what Joey wants.

“He bought me a five thousand dollar photograph.”

“Damn,” she whistles. “The man’s got it bad. Have you talked to him?”

“Not really. I went to his niece’s Christmas pageant, but we didn’t talk much. I’m just… so upset about how the Levi situation went down. Like, he could have told me, y’know? Let me in on it, so I wasn’t completely blindsided by it. And then everything with Bree happened—”

“She told you she kissed him,” Joey says. “You can’t blame him for that. I was under the impression that he never liked her all that much.”

“Yeah, well.”

“Well what?”

I groan and throw my head back, knocking it against the arm rest. I groan again. A concussion is exactly what I wanted for Christmas.

“I liked it better when you never talked to me,” I mumble.

“You have this habit of inserting yourself into someone’s life and leaving a lasting impression,” she says. “You need to talk to him. So much has happened over such a short period of time and—”

A perfectly timed knock echoes from the door.

“I have to go, Jo,” I say, kicking off the blankets. “Someone’s here.”

“What did you say, Olivia? The fire department is there? The apartment is on fire? Oh my—”