Her tears spill over my fingers, but I don’t stop holding her. She says, “You know what I learned in the four months we’ve been apart?”

A lump lodges in my throat.

“I’m unable to not worry about you,” she says in a tight breath.

Something sits on my chest. Heavy. I want it off. Off. “I love you,” I say. “But you have to, Willow. Because you’re not going to be happy if you’re just constantly worried that I’m not having a good time here in Philly.” I want to say that I’ll make friends, but I’m not planning on reaching out to random people and accidentally grabbing a fame-leeching parasite.

I want to say that I don’t need any friends, but I don’t want to lie. I hate being alone.

Hell, I also hate having friends.

Like I said, I’m cursed.

She sniffs. “Lo told me something like that.”

Of course he did. “What’d he say?”

“That I have to let you get used to the long-distance. That I can’t do anything to make you feel better.”

Loren Hale. Jesus. I wonder if he even knows how much he gets me. Like he’s taken a road trip in my head and come out the other side. I don’t understand it.

“He’s right,” I say. “You sacrificing shit for me isn’t going to make me happy or feel better.”

“Then what will make you happy?”

I don’t know.

I should have a better answer to that question. But there’s one thing I know. She can’t suppress her happiness because she feels guilty. I can’t be poison in her life.

And then I hear her brother’s worry in my head. I don’t know what you’ll fucking do. Lo and Ryke thought I’d break up with her. Now I understand why.

But I won’t.

I won’t.

I still believe we’re good for one another, even a continent away. She is the thing that makes me happy. But it’s on me—because I need to find something else that can push me through a day. Not someone. Something.

I desperately need something to get me through the next three-and-a-half years.

23 PRESENT DAY – December

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

GARRISON ABBEY

Age 21

What the fuck was I thinking?

I must be out of my mind. Watching Willow leave to board a plane and fly back to London must have really fucked with my head.

Because there’s no other explanation as to why I accepted the invitation to return home.

It’s the weekend before New Years, and I should have hung up when I heard my mom’s voice, but instead, I listened to her pleas, begging me to just come home.

For a second. For a minute. To spend time with family. The family that I keep distancing myself from like the miscreant troublemaker that I am.

So I went home.

And during a ham dinner, I’ve been listening to stories about Mitchell’s grad school. How Hunter is coaching lacrosse at Penn, and Davis has put his MBA to use, snagging a six-figure promotion at our father’s loaded tech company.