“No, no, that’s okay,” he said. “You should stay here. It’s your house.”

He began bustling around, picking things up, and Greta kicked off her boots.

“Hey, stop.” She pushed him down on the couch. “What’s wrong?”

Truman closed his eyes and bit his lip, shaking his head like he could banish the problem. “It’s pathetic,” he said.

“Oh, I assure you, no matter what’s going on I will sympathize. I just left my mother crying in a pantry.”

The tiniest bit of interest peeked through his misery.

“So what’s up with you? I know we don’t actually know each other, but I feel like we do, so do you want to skip the small talk and just be friends? I could really use the distraction, to be honest.”

Truman looked up at her with brown eyes full of tears.

“I fell in love with Ash, and he doesn’t want me to stay.”

The tears spilled over, and Truman squeezed his eyes shut.

“Oh my god, that’s amazing!”

Truman’s eyes flew open.

“Sorry, no. That’s horrible. No. I just meant Ash is so great, and he deserves to have someone awesome fall in love with him.”

Truman snorted. “Yeah, lucky him. And I offered to stay here with him. But what kind of total chump uproots their whole life to move thousands of miles away after knowing someone for three weeks? So obviously he told me to get lost.”

Greta pursed her lips. “Erm. Well…”

And Greta told Truman about her own love affair with Carys and with New Orleans.

“And you haven’t told her yet?”

“That I love her? No. But she knew I was coming back, so…”

“She probably knows,” Truman concluded. “You’re very…um…easy to read.”

“Am I?”

Truman’s smile was gentle. “Very. It’s nice.”

“Oh. Cool. Anyway, my point is that you’re not a chump.”

“Or maybe we both are,” Truman offered.

“I choose to reject that interpretation,” Greta said, and Truman almost laughed. But something was still niggling at her. “Okay, tell me what happened with Ash, because honestly, you seem like someone he’d totally adore.”

Truman told her the sweetest story of kindness and help and love and care, and Greta’s heart was full for her friend who had had such a tough life.

“Then he said he couldn’t see me anymore because it’d hurt too much when I left. But when I offered to stay…” Truman’s voice caught. “He said no.”

“That’s exactly what he said? He told you no?”

Truman threw himself back on the couch cushions.

“No, he’s a sweetheart, so he was nice about it. He said he didn’t want me to do that just for him and that he didn’t feel like he had anything to give me.”