I wait at the baggage carousel, get my suitcase, and then wait on the curb for my driver to arrive.

I get in, thankful to find the back of the car empty—no Lisa Michele here to talk my ear off about some horrible new infrared beauty product or whatever.

It’s sunny and bright, warm with a cool breeze. The car drives beneath blue skies with wispy white clouds. Sparkling green palm trees wave in the morning sun. The traffic is slow-moving because of the hour, but I don’t care. I feel empty. Like someone took an ice cream scooper to my insides.

The driver swears at the people who cut him off, lurching from lane to lane.

I realize, at some point, that I’m not tense. I’m heartbroken, but I’m not electrified with fear like I usually am in the car.

Instead, I feel shrouded in grief. The loss of Cillian. The loss of Kiera. The loss of Aimee, all over again.

I hadn’t even gotten to say goodbye.

I hadn’t had a real last moment with Kiera.

I never made up with Cillian’s mom, apologized for breaking her son’s heart and explained that my own heart was broken too.

I never met bloody Kay Donahue, tried her soup or listened to whatever gossip she’d have to impart.

I never thanked Cillian’s dad.

I forgot to tell Aimee about all the friends we had in high school and what they’re doing now, in my world.

I never got to tell Cillian all the ways he made me feel. Because there’s not enough time on earth for that.

It’s so incomplete. It’s as if my favorite show got canceled without wrapping up all the storylines. But that’s what grief is, isn’t it? Expectation and resolution slashed, leaving unfinished conversations behind.

Will it feel like this forever now? It can’t. I can’t.

These thoughts remind me uncomfortably of those days after Aimee died. I couldn’t make sense of the loss. It didn’t make any sense. I kept thinking I could use logic to talk my way out of the reality I was suddenly facing. The reality being that I would simply never have back the happiness that had fallen through my fingers and shattered on the ground beneath my feet, the shards of it lodging into my skin, past the calluses, and making me bleed.

Despite the traffic, we’re back at Grayson’s house sooner than I’m prepared for. I melt unhappily out of the back of the car and walk up the driveway.

I don’t get inside before I hear the jingling of her collar.

Dido comes running toward me.

The one silver lining to all this.

“Oh, Dido,” I say, feeling my love for her spill out all over the temperature-regulated concrete we stand on.