I take a breath and Drew tightens his hand around mine. “I don’t think it was wrong of me to do it. I’m seventeen. Way too young to be a mom. And, Jesus, I can’t even imagine right now, with a kid—after the wave. You know? And I was on a lot, I mean a lot, of stuff. I just think if I hadn’t been fucked-up, maybe I would have—considered it. Having a baby. I don’t know. It was earlier than I planned, but I wasn’t going to do the college thing. I really do just want to be a mom and a yoga teacher, which maybe makes me basic, but … it’s totally possible I maybe would have been like, no, I’m not ready to have a kid and that’s that. If Mae got pregnant, it’d be such an easy decision. To go to the clinic. And I would have totally supported that. But it’s all so fucked-up for me because I wasn’t certain. It isn’t simple, like, no drugs equals baby. Drugs equals no baby. If I were sober, I still might have done it.

“The worst part is I don’t know because of where I was at, at the time. I was so depressed—Dr. Brown said that’s part of why I started using in the first place. I mean, fucking duh, right? And because for Micah there was just no discussion, none. Maybe he would have left. And without him, by myself? How would I…? He should have come. Maybe if he’d been there, he would have, could have seen, could have felt … I know we’re young, but … He should have come.”

“He let you go there alone.”

His voice is so soft I almost don’t catch how deeply fucking pissed he is. Horror and anger mixed together, like he took my feelings and made a sound with them.

“Maybe he felt, like, since my mom was there I didn’t need him to be, too. I don’t know. It’s my … body. My choice.” I chanted that at the Women’s March with Mom and Mae. And I believe that.

“But it’s your heart, too,” he says quietly.

Right when he says this, some of the ragged parts inside my chest, all those frayed pieces of my heart, start to fuse back together.

He smiles, like he can hear that stitching happening. “This is probably the weirdest conversation you’ve ever had with your dealer, huh?”

“Former dealer.”

“I like the sound of that.”

We are staring at each other in the way you do when you’ve just hiked to the top of a mountain you thought you’d never be able to climb. It’s hard to breathe. But the view—it’s magnificent.

“Does Micah ever tell you how beautiful you are?”