“Only you’re not a kid anymore, Chlo,” Milo says, softening a bit. “You’re an adult now, and our parents are getting older.”

“Uh, yeah,” I say. “I’m well aware.”

“And I know you’re mad at Mom. I am, too. Or I was, I don’t know. But what do you have to lose from talking to her?”

“Where is she?” I ask.

Milo sighs. “She’s here, in Columbus. They moved back.”

I can only assume that “they” refers to her and her Internet boyfriend, but I can’t even focus on that.

“Is that why you came back here?” I ask. “To hang with your deadbeat mom?”

“That’s not the only reason.”

My voice rises as the realization hits me. “Wow. Wow. I thought you came back because you had a change of heart, because you wanted to be around for Dad—”

“I do!” Milo starts to say, but I cut him off.

“I thought maybe you gave a shit about me. But that’s not it at all. You came back for her. You came back for the woman who left us.”

“Chloe.” I look Milo in the eye and he’s pleading with me, his face begging me to listen. This is the look I always cave for, the one that makes me give him whatever he wants.

But not anymore.

“I’m sorry, Chloe,” he says. “I’ll do better. But I never knew you needed my help—you never asked for my help.”

“I thought the whole ‘people should take care of their sick fathers’ thing was kind of an unspoken rule. Forget it.” I rub my temples. “I’ve done fine without you the past few years. I’ll keep doing fine.”

He rears back like I slapped him, but I don’t wait around to hear what he has to say. I spin out of the room and through the kitchen, where Fred and Mikey Danger are sitting at the kitchen table, eating straight out of a pizza box.

“Oh, hey, Chloe,” Mikey Danger says, toasting me with a piece of pizza.

“Is everything okay?” Fred asks with concern evident on his beautiful face. He probably heard me yelling at Milo; after all, the walls in this place are thin.

“Everything’s fine,” I say as I head out the door and into the night. “Everything’s perfect. Everything’s great.”

I slam the door behind me, then notice that the drizzle has turned into pouring rain. I bolt toward my car. I’m soaking wet, my hair plastered to my face, my dress clinging to my body. I loved this dress when I put it on this morning, but now I want to set it on fire.

Once I’m in the safety of my car, I pull my phone out of my purse and stare at it. I don’t want to go home, to my silent, lonely apartment where I’ll watch sitcoms late into the night instead of sleeping. I don’t want to call Annie, because as bad as things were between us before, they’re probably much worse now that I’ve ditched the premiere of her first movie. Everyone else I know is at the premiere, except for Tracey, who’s on her anniversary trip with her wife.