“Hey!” I squinted at her, blindly patting for it so I could pull it back over my head. “Give that back!”

“Nope.” She rolled it up in her arms and tossed it out the door. “Up.”

I curled into a ball and groaned.

“You smell like a dumpster, and all this sulky, sad panda business is freaking me out. So get up. Shower. We’re meeting Luke at your apartment in an hour to talk about construction.”

I groaned again, but this time it came out closer to a whimper.

“Don’t gimme that. You’ve had your allotted moping time, and in forty-eight hours, I’ll allow another wallowing session. I’ll even climb in bed with you for as long as you want.”

I lifted my head so I could see her. “As long as I want?”

“Days even. I’ll bring the takeout and John Hughes movies.”

“And Dirty Dancing.”

“Sure. Dirty Dancing, Sixteen Candles, Pride and Prejudice—whatever you want.”

“Not the Colin Firth one,” I warned.

She rolled her eyes long enough that one of her eyelids fluttered. “Fine, we’ll watch the wrong Pride and Prejudice, but only because you’re sad.”

“Fine,” I huffed, hauling myself to sit.

When I sighed, the triumphant look on her face faded. She took a seat next to me. “I’m sorry, Lila. For all of this.”

That heaviness that had taken up residence in my chest sank lower. I curled around it protectively. “It’s my own fault. All of it.”

“Hang on—I know you’re sad, but let’s not be delusional. Natasha Felix was not your fault. Brock was not your fault. Kash … well, that one is more complicated, but frankly, he’s being an asshole.”

“I was the harbinger of every fear he possesses. I fulfilled every prophecy. Lived up to the worst version of myself. He thought he wasn’t good enough for me when it was the other way around. He thinks he’s unaccomplished, but not by my definition of the word. He thinks he’s not smart enough—”

“Well, he is being a stupid dummy right now.”

I chuckled, but the sound was sad. “I don’t care. I don’t care about any of it. I love him. I didn’t realize the life I wanted wasn’t the life I’d been working for, not until him. And now he’s all I want. That life is all I want. But if I can’t have him, at least I walked away from the rest of it. I can start over. Work toward a new life, the one grown-up me has figured out she wants instead of the one teenage me imagined she wanted.”

“Have you figured out your next move?”

“Open my own firm. I just have to come up with a good name and I can get started on the rest.”