“I was also… perhaps… a bit of a dickweed.” Andrew pinches the bridge of his nose, and that gesture fills me with a potent cocktail of affection and heartache. “It’s been a month. I should’ve reached out. I dragged you into a ridiculous situation—got us both into a situation that was way over our heads—and when it blew up, I just… I ditched you. I felt so much shame and guilt about the way my family blamed you, and I was scared that if I got back in touch, you’d be furious with me, and I’m really sorry, Ellie.”

I didn’t know I needed an apology from Andrew until he waltzed into my closet offering me one. It’s not because I’ve been harboring any anger toward him. More than anything, I’m hurt. Andrew and I were virtual strangers when we agreed to become spouses, but over the course of our short time together, I thought we’d become something closer to friends, and I don’t have many of those. Then, when it all fell apart and Andrew ghosted me, it sent a pretty clear message: our relationship was always a business transaction, and without the money, I was no longer of use to him.

“I’m not furious,” I finally tell him, and I watch his shoulders unspool from up by his ears. “Just a little bit hurt. If I’m being honest—” Honest, even when it’s hard. “I missed you.”

Andrew arches a silky black brow and shoots me a seductive look. “Oh, you missed me, did you?”

I kick him, hard, in the shins. “What happened? With your family? After I left? Was your sister… Has she forgiven you?”

Andrew gives me a crooked smile, like he knows how worried I am to hear the answer. “Of course she forgave me. We’re family. Jack was livid for, like, two days, and then we talked it out and everything is fine. The rest of the family is fine, too.”

He says this all so easily, without the blurred edges of trauma or pain. If only that’s how things were with Linds. “I haven’t spoken to my own mom in a month,” I tell him. “I tried to create healthier boundaries for our relationship, and my mom wasn’t interested.”

Andrew reaches out and grabs my socked foot, gives it a shake. “Fuck ’em,” he says in a perfect imitation of Meemaw. “She doesn’t deserve you or your healthy boundaries, and neither does my dad. He actually didn’t take things super well. My dad, he… he fired me.”

I study Andrew’s neutral expression, waiting for the punch line of this joke. “Wait, what? Your dad fired you? From Prescott Investments?”