About ten minutes in, something seems to shift inside her. She looks less like she’s forcibly dragging her body along the sidewalk and more like she’s regaining control. She blinks once, twice, like she’s focusing on the world around her for the first time since leaving the club. She stops in the middle of the sidewalk with no warning. “Zach. Where the hell are we going?”

I flush. I’m glad she sounds more like herself, although now that I’m being forced to say where we’re going out loud, I realize that the place I’ve chosen could be construed as sort of nerdy. But in the moment I couldn’t think of anywhere else…and who am I kidding—I am sort of nerdy. “It’s called the Last Bookstore.”

She raises her eyebrows. “That’s a real place? It sounds like something from Harry Potter.”

My mouth is dry, but I manage to choke out a laugh. “Yeah, it’s real.” God, what if she thinks I’m the biggest loser ever for taking her to a bookstore?

She shrugs. “All right. If you say so.”

I glance at the map on my phone. “It’s up here around the corner.”

She gives me a long look, then shrugs and motions for me to lead the way.

Chapter Twenty-one

Zach and I stand in front of massive iron doors that lead into the store, and all I can think about is how when Miles and I dated, the only places he ever took me were parties where we’d get wasted and do stupid shit. He never wanted to do anything else. Back then I didn’t care; I liked getting fucked-up way too much. That’s what our super-healthy relationship was built on—being cool and partying. He and I would arrive somewhere together, he’d run off with the other guys on the soccer team, and we’d meet up at the end of the night to make out. Shocking that we didn’t get married, huh?

Lucy tried to get me to see that a couple times, but she stopped after it led to another awful fight one night when I was drunk. I told her that she needed to stop putting her shit on me, that she’d been brainwashed by her AA cult to think the rest of the world were all addicts too. That just because she couldn’t have a good time without ruining everything around her didn’t mean that I couldn’t.

It wasn’t my finest moment.

And I was so wrong.

—