“That’s not what I meant,” I say. “At all.”

  “You said no one wants you around,” he replies. “What about me?”

  “What about you?” I say.

  “Me wanting you doesn’t count?” he asks, brows knitted together.

  A fiery heat wave, a series of them, one after another.

  Me wanting you.

  Me wanting you.

  Me wanting you.

  “It counts,” I say. It’s terrifying how much it counts. I set my plate aside. “What about you?”

  “Me?” he says.

  “I heard your phone call,” I confess.

  He’s quiet, thoughtful, for several seconds. “It was my dad.”

  I start. “Your dad?”

  “He’s been trying to call me nonstop,” he says, “from phone numbers that I don’t have blocked. So he could tell me to get Julia to call him back.”

  I gawk. “I don’t understand.”

  “Turns out they’ve been talking,” he says. “Which I’m guessing she didn’t tell me because she knew it would stress me out, waiting for him to fuck her over again. Which he did. He figured out where Jules worked, because she still lets him follow her on social media—which I warned her about—and he told our mom.

  “She showed up at the restaurant. Upset Julia bad enough that she walked out. Got fired, blocked my dad, and got on an airplane here—not necessarily in that order—and now he’s harassing me to try to get her to forgive him.”

  “Oh my god, Miles,” I say. “That’s terrible.”

  “I’m sorry.” He rubs the bridge of his nose.

  “Why?” I ask.

  He shrugs. “I don’t want to dump this on you.”

  “You’re not dumping it on me,” I promise.

  “I’m used to keeping all of this separate. And nothing is, with you. You’re my roommate and my best friend and the woman I just slept with.”

  My eyes burn. I try to blink away the feeling.

  He’s looking at me like he’s trying to strain something out of me. “Daphne?”

  “You’re my best friend too.” It comes out as a throaty whisper. “That’s why today was so hard, when my dad left.”

  My throat twists, my voice wobbling: “Because you saw it. And it makes me feel pathetic. Even more so because the truth is, if he turned around and came right back here, I’d be thrilled. I’d forgive him again and again, just hoping that eventually I’d actually mean something to him. I’d call and beg him to come back, if I thought there was a chance he’d say yes. But I can’t, because I know he won’t. And I don’t want to hear that. I don’t want him to prove that I’m . . .”

  I’m trying to find alternate words.

  Because just saying these feels like codifying the truth into existence.

  It’s painful to push them past the knot in my throat, but holding them in all these years hasn’t made me feel better, hasn’t made them less true, hasn’t stanched the bleeding or numbed the pain. “That I’m not worth it.”

  “Hey.” Miles’s arms come around me, his heat and spicy ginger scent soaking into me.

  “A part of me is just waiting,” I rasp, “for the moment when you see whatever it is that drives people away. And I don’t want that. I don’t want you to stop wanting me around. I think it might break my heart to be someone you don’t like.”

  “Fuck. Daphne.” His hands come up to my face. “Do you want to know why your dad doesn’t stick around?”

  Tears sting the back of my nose, but I nod. It’s the question I’ve never been able to stop asking, no matter how badly it hurts.

  “Because you see him,” Miles says. “And he can’t stand it. And Peter’s the same shit with a different outfit, so bored with himself he convinced himself that being with someone like Petra would turn him into someone else, without, like, having to be brave enough to try acid.”

  “He was bored with me, Miles,” I say.

  “If it was about you,” he says, “he could’ve ended it. Instead he blew up his life. That’s about him. I’ve been that guy, a dozen times, with a dozen people I didn’t deserve. It’s easy to be loved by the ones who’ve never seen you fuck up. The ones you’ve never had to apologize to, and who still think all your ‘quirks’ are charming.

  “It’s easy to be around people who don’t know you. But as soon as someone starts to figure you out—as soon as you can’t be perfect—it’s easier to move on. Find someone new to be the cool, fun, laid-back one with.”

  “So that’s it?” My voice crackles. “I make people feel like their worst selves.”

  “Daphne, no.” He pulls me in against him, his face buried in my neck. “God, no.” When he draws back, tense dimples have pricked his scruffy jaw. “Look, I’ve always wanted to be that fun, easy person with no baggage, even with Petra. But after a while, someone either finally sees you or they don’t, and either way it fucking sucks. Because if they see you, and it’s not what they signed up for, then they’re out of there. And if they never see you . . . it’s worse. Because you’re just alone.

  “And I loved Petra,” he says, “but deep down I knew, as soon as things stopped being fun, she’d be gone. And she was. She found something more romantic, more perfect, just more. I think you’re the first person who’s really seen me. Past what I want people to see.

  “You make the people you care about feel like . . .” He pauses. “Like you want all of them. Not just the good parts. And that’s terrifying to someone who’s spent a lifetime avoiding those other pieces of themselves.”

  “I don’t want to scare people off,” I say, throat aching.

  He shakes his head. “It’s worth being scared. Trust me. You’re worth it.”

  He kisses the center of my palm. Heat gathers in my belly. It builds between us. Just standing here in the kitchen with him is in the top three most erotic moments of my life.

  I lift my face, and he brushes his nose back and forth against mine. “You’re worth it, Daphne,” he says, hand soft on my jaw and eyes closed.

  “Miles?” I whisper.

  “Hm?”

  “I do,” I say. “I do want all those parts of you.”

  His eyes open, molten, warm. “Good,” he says. “They want you too.”

  Then he kisses me. It’s perfect.

  No, better than that. It’s every part of him, at once.

  “My room or yours?” I ask him.

  “Yours,” he says. “First, yours.”

  29

  SUNDAY, AUGUST 4TH

  13 DAYS UNTIL THE READ-A-THON

  I sleep late on Sunday, and when I do wake, Miles is still in my bed, one arm over me.

  I stretch my sore limbs in every direction, and he stirs. Through a smile, one eye open, he croaks, “Hey.”

  My heart flutters drunkenly. “Hey.”

  He snuggles closer, setting his cheek against my stomach. “What time is it?”

  “Noon,” I tell him.

  “Shit.” He tips his face up to look at me. “Are you hungry?”

  “Since I met you,” I say, “constantly.”

  * * *

  We spend the day in a dreamy daze. We drink our tea and coffee on the rug in front of the open windows, sunshine on our faces. When we finish, we make refills and do it again.

  For lunch, we walk down the street to a sandwich shop, eat on a bench by the bike trail. Everything feels impossibly normal, easy between us.

  We go to Miles’s favorite walk-up soft-serve place and get ice cream covered in roughly chopped candy bars, eat it as we wander to his truck. We drive to the Sunday farmers’ market and buy what we need to make cauliflower tacos. Or what he needs, rather, because I have no idea what I’m doing, just following his directions while a very sad but hauntingly beautiful Glen Campbell song plays on his Bluetooth speaker, the windows still open, a breeze rustling through the apartment.

  After we eat, he pulls me into his lap at the kitchen table and kisses me like he’s in no rush, like we have all the time in the world.

  And it feels true. Like there is no world, no passing time.

  “Want to sleep over?” he teases, brushing his nose against mine.

  “Am I invited?” I ask.

  “Open invitation,” he says. “Anytime you want.”

  In his room, we tangle in his woodsmoke-scented sheets, hands in hair, nails raving over skin. When he pushes into me at last, I accidentally gasp “wow,” a new-to-me reaction to sex I expect to make him laugh.

  Miles just nods as if agreeing, sneaks a hand under my neck, and kisses me again, so tenderly I could almost cry.

  Then I’m a little bit worried I actually am going to cry, which is also a new experience, but my heart just feels so raw.

  Like the whole day is catching up to me, or the last four months, or maybe longer. Decades of feeling braced against the world, and now I can’t find that sensation, the layer between me and everyone else, and it’s terrifying and freeing and intense.

  We move slowly, heavily, and every time one of us reaches a tipping point, we turn. Rearrange. Find new ways to hold each other, to move together. Lying on our sides, him behind me, his arm draped over my hip and his hand tucked between my thighs, he murmurs my name, like it’s an exclamation, the sound you make after a perfect sip of wine.

  I knew being with him like this would be good, and fun, and maybe even funny, but I’m surprised how my chest keeps twinging like my feelings have too much weight, and my rib cage might crack under them. I keep catching myself just before the words can tip over my lips: I love you.

  It’s too soon. It’s too complicated. For once, I don’t want to be anywhere but in this moment, not thinking about what it all means or where it might go, and he makes that easy, this sunlit man.

  Miles kisses my shoulder, my neck, my jaw as the intensity builds. He notices when I start to lose control, to move faster. He holds my hips tight and bucks to meet me hard and deep, and I’ve never felt anything quite like this before.

  Like there’s no boundary between us, like he’s in my mind and heart and soul, and I want to keep him there even as I know this moment can’t last.

  We’re cresting, and when we do, we’ll float back down into reality, into our two separate bodies.

  But right now, he’s entirely mine and I’m his.

  * * *

  In the night I get up to pee, and when I come back, Miles is splayed out in the middle of the bed, arm outstretched like he’d been reaching for me in his sleep.

  Seeing him there, lit by the moon, sends a crushing tenderness through me.

  I tiptoe through the chilly room, climb into bed as gracefully as I can, but he still wakes enough to sleepily drape an arm around my waist and haul me into the warm nook of his body. “You were gone,” he murmurs.

  “Now I’m back,” I whisper.

  With a low, drowsy hum, he kisses my shoulder, and drifts back to sleep.

  30

  MONDAY, AUGUST 5TH

  12 DAYS UNTIL THE READ-A-THON

  In the morning, I don’t wake Miles.

  As much as I would like to spend the morning making out, we were up late, and I’ll see him when he picks me up from work anyway. He’d texted Katya last night to see if she wanted his shift, and she’d replied not at all but I need money so I’ll take it, and so we’d decided to get dinner and drive up to a dark sky park.

  While I’m dressing, I spot the note from Dad sitting on my dresser. When I was younger, I would’ve read it over and over, scouring for proof that he loved me, or clues about what I’d done to drive him off. Today, I just toss it into the trash on my way out.

  I feel like Belle in the beginning of Beauty and the Beast, walking around with a shit-eating grin, greeting everyone like it’s the first day of the rest of my life. I’d be less obvious wearing an I’ve Had Great Sex sandwich board.

  I stop at Fika for tea and order Ashleigh a latte too. When Jonah hands it back to me, a realization hits like a gong, reverberating through my bones.

  Ashleigh.

  I was supposed to paint with Ashleigh.

  On my way out the door, I open my calendar and scan for her birthday.

  Only, I never added Ashleigh’s birthday to my calendar. I’ve barely added anything in weeks, just like the whiteboard’s gone to the wayside.

  An icy fist presses against the bottom of my stomach. It was this past Saturday, I’m positive.

  She called in sick, I remember then, which triggers another nauseating lurch in my gut. She was sick on her birthday and I didn’t even check in on her.

  How could I forget about her? How could I let this happen?

  I practically run the rest of the way to work and get there right as Ashleigh’s locking her hatchback.

  As I jog toward her, something flashes in her eyes, too quickly to read, and my heart turns over painfully as her expression settles back into neutrality.

  I come to a stop, choke out, “Hey.”

  When she doesn’t say anything, I hold her coffee out to her. She looks at it, her hand tightening on her purse strap for a second, before grudgingly accepting it.

  “I’m so sorry,” I blurt out. “About Saturday. I just—my dad was in town, and then he left really abruptly, and I was completely distracted and Miles and I—god, I’m really sorry.”

  She snorts, shakes her head. “You know,” she says. “It was your idea to do something for my birthday. You insisted. And weirdly, you even got me excited about it.”

  “I know,” I say. “You shouldn’t have been home sick alone on your birthday. I understand why you’re upset with me.”

  “I wasn’t sick,” she says. “I took the day off.”

  “You never take the day off,” I point out.

  “Which is why I did, for my birthday. I stayed home and got ready to paint my bedroom a horrendous shade of pink, just because, and watch Real Housewives with my friend.”

  My face heats. “I’m so sorry, Ash. Why didn’t you call me?”

  She scoffs. “What, more than those nine times? Call me old-fashioned, but once I hit the double digits, I start to feel a tad desperate.”

  “Oh my god,” I groan. “The beach! We didn’t have service.”

  “We,” she says.

  My throat tightens. “I really can’t believe I missed it.”

  “It’s fine,” she says.

  “It’s obviously not,” I say. “It’s unbelievably shitty.”

  “Seriously, Daphne, don’t worry about it,” she says. “I knew you were a we-girl and now you’ve got a we. As the internet likes to say, when someone tells you who they are, believe them.”

  “Ashleigh!” I cry. “What are you talking about?”

  “Miles,” she says. “That’s who you blew me off for, right?”

  My heart feels like there’s a perforated line forming down its middle, a force tugging at each side. “I’m not a we with Miles. We’re not . . . that.”

  “Maybe not,” she says. “But clearly something changed while I was in Sedona, and whatever it is that the two of you are doing now, you don’t need me anymore.”

  Her words knock me back.

  Is that what I did? Is that who I am?

  A person who treats people like loosely penciled-in backup plans, in case nothing better comes along?

  I feel sick.

  Worse, I’m about to cry.

  I try to rein it in, but my voice crackles: “You’re right. I treated you like a fallback, and that’s shitty. I’m sorry. That’s not what you are to me.”

  She drops her eyes to the concrete. “Look, I’m trying to be on time to work, so if you don’t mind, I’m going to just . . .”

  “Yeah,” I scratch out. “Of course.”

  She walks away without looking back.

  My heart breaks a little, and I have no one to blame but myself.

  * * *

  After work, I stagger my departure so that Ashleigh—who barely said four words to me all day—isn’t walking out at the same time as me.

  Miles isn’t here yet, so I pace along the curb, trying to burn off the cortisol flooding my system.

  After a while, I go sit on the sun-hot bench and try to read. For once, I can’t seem to escape into a book. My mind keeps going back to Ashleigh.

  A part of me just wants the comfort of being wrapped up in Miles’s arms, everything else temporarily obliterated. But then again, that’s how I got here.

  I let myself get absorbed, again.

  Still, I’ll feel better when he gets here. I’ll figure out a way to make it up to Ashleigh, to prove I’m not that person. I won’t let myself be.

  I check the time. Twenty minutes late and no word yet. With how often Miles forgets his phone or lets it die, that’s not a huge surprise.

  I pull my laptop out and angle it against the sun. I’m still connected to the library’s Wi-Fi, so I pull up my Read-a-thon checklist and keep working.

  The parking lot empties. The streetlights pop on as the sun begins its slow plod toward sunset.

  Forty minutes have passed, and a pit opens in my stomach.

  I snap my computer shut and call Miles, trying not to picture him unconscious in a ditch on the side of the road, or in any other of a million worst-case scenarios.

  The call rings out to voice mail.

  I type everything okay? and hit send, then start pacing again.

  You’re being ridiculous, I tell myself. He’s fine.

  I check my phone.

  Again.

  Again.