I look up, my eyes blazing with shame and anger.

He is going far.

Too far.

Twisting the knife in my chest, watching me bleed.

Yet I’m full to the brim with guilt.

“I know we should break up. I know. But if it’s the right thing to do, why does it hurt so bad?” I ask, feeling snot running down to my mouth.

Nothing about this situation is pretty, me included.

“Holding on to something that never existed is far more painful,” he spits. “Trust me, Rory, I’ve tried.”

A NOTE FROM SUMMER

Time to air the dirty laundry, and boy, there’s a suspicious-looking stain the size of Alabama on my conscience.

Okay—insert deep, cleansing breath—here goes.

A month after Rory and Callum started dating, he dropped in unannounced while she was at work. It was supposed to be a surprise. He brought flowers and champagne and sashimi from her favorite sushi place and wore a bowtie—and not even in a hipster, looks-good-with-skinny-jeans kind of way. Rory was supposed to be home, but Ryner had called her in—some emergency about a pop star who lost a bunch of weight and decided she wanted a reshoot of her album cover.

Rory never turns down work. I think she’ll die clutching her camera to her heart.

Anyway, so Callum knocked on the door with all this stuff, and I happened to answer it. I’d just broken up with the guy I’d been dating for three years who had cheated on me that day. Suffice it to say, I was not in a good headspace.

Callum stuttered, apologized, and said he’d drop in at her work. I laughed, knowing she’d probably take the opportunity to dump him if he did that.

We ended up sharing the bottle of champagne Callum brought. He wasn’t much of a drinker. That’s what he told me, anyway, but he said he was feeling really on edge. He said he knew Rory was going to break up with him. He thought she found him boring and too straightedge and overtly proper.

He thought correctly.

Rory did find him boring. And she always compared him to Mal. Which grated on my nerves, because yes, Mal was awesome, gorgeous, and great in the sack, but that was over, and it was time to move on.

When she came back from Ireland all those years ago, she showed me the pictures she took of him. I had a brilliant idea of how to help her get over him. I told her to come up with negative things about Mal and write them on the back of the pictures, so every time she thought about hopping on a plane and begging him to be with her (which happened more often than logically acceptable), she’d remember.