Chapter 34: A Deal With The Devil: Chapter 34

On the morning of our trip, my phone rings early. Too early.

It’s barely light out and Hayes, beside me, doesn’t even twitch at the sound. I grab his T-shirt off the floor and head toward the stairs.

“Tali?” my mother asks, her voice tremulous and strained, as if she’s been crying.

“What happened?” I can barely get the words out. “Is it Charlotte?”

“It’s me. I was in a car accident last night and broke my leg. They say I won’t be able to drive for months. I know you weren’t due home for a few weeks, but I can’t even get to the store.”

I blow out a breath. If I were a better daughter, I’d go rushing out there. But surely, she can wait until the weekend is over, at least?

“Okay,” I tell her. “I’m going away, but next week I’ll—”

“I need you here today,” she says. “The situation is…complicated.”

“Complicated how?”

“I’d had a little to drink,” she says. “So, I got a DUI and the officer is claiming I hit him and…well, the upshot is that I’m now in police custody and the moment I’m released from the hospital they’re taking me to jail. I need you there to post bail.”

“God, Mom,” I whisper. There’s so much to say that I don’t even know where to begin. She’s the parent. It’s not my job to scold her. But how could she have been so irresponsible? I take small, shallow breaths. Blaming her and blaming myself. I’d been secretly hoping she’d pull herself together before Charlotte returned. It was impossibly stupid of me. And selfish. I just wanted that extra time with Hayes so, so badly.

“I’ll come home. I’ll fix it,” I tell her, but something hardens inside me. I always felt like my loyalty to my family was infinite. For the first time ever, I’m seeing an end point. I’ll do whatever is necessary for Charlotte, but I’m not sure I’ll ever forgive my mother for making me give up what I’m about to.

I hang up and take a long, shuddering breath.

“What happened?” Hayes asks.

I look at his face and want to weep. These weeks have been amazing, but there’ve been no promises made. I had no reason to be in LA anymore anyhow, and I couldn’t ask him to wait for me.

“I have to go home,” I whisper. “My mom’s broken her leg.”

He kneels beside me, still in nothing but boxers. “For how long?” he asks.

He’s probably doing the same math I am: wondering how long this would have lasted anyway, wondering if it’s worth suggesting we continue.

I swallow. “A long time,” I reply. “At least until Charlotte’s in college next year.”

I bury my face in my hands, and he pulls me against his chest. My tears aren’t really about my mom or my sister, because nothing there has changed. I’m crying because this is the end of what I had here with Hayes, and it just feels so fucking unfair.

Eventually, he helps me off the floor and books me on a noon flight home. “Do you need to go to your apartment and pack? I’ll drive you there.”

I shake my head. “You’ve got patients. You’ll be late.”

“I don’t, actually,” he says. “We were going to leave this morning for our trip.”

My heart hurts. He’s changed so much over the past few months. He’s happy, and he’s taking time off, and he did this for me and now…what will happen? “What was the surprise?”

He swallows. “I’ll tell you another time.” I simply nod, too sad to even push him on it.

I let him drive me to my apartment. We climb the stairs, saying nothing. And with every step, I’m realizing all the experiences with him I’ll never have again.

He’ll never wait at the counter for another smoothie, his gaze on my ass the entire time. I’ll never see his face light up as I walk into his office, catch that relieved smile when he sees me waiting for him at the end of the day. Never again will he undress me, growling some complaint about how I’m wearing too many clothes as he moves me toward the bed.

It’s all in the past, already, when it feels like it barely began.

When we reach my apartment, I walk in, but he remains at the threshold, rigid. That we are ill-matched has never been clearer than it is now. I’m used to the way I live, but to him, it must look like I’m practically homeless, squatting in a place that’s roughly the size of his closet. In his home, I never felt like my debt made me less of a person, but now I’m seeing it through his eyes, and how could it not?

“Now you see why I never wanted you to come over here.”

“Why were you living like this?” he asks. “You’ve been making good money.”

“I was saving to pay back the advance if necessary, and pay for the rest of Charlotte’s stay. I wasn’t joking about all the ramen noodles.”

He takes a seat on the bed, shoulders hunched, jaw grim. “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me? I would have helped you.”

“Because I don’t want help,” I reply. I wanted it to feel like we were equals, which seems laughable now that he’s here. We were never equals.

I pull my suitcases out of the closet and start to pack. He opens a drawer and then stops. “What are you taking?”

“Everything.” I don’t know why it’s so hard to say it out loud. “My lease is up soon anyway. I’ll take what I can and see if Jonathan can get rid of the bed.”

I want, with my whole heart, for him to suggest an alternative, but the flicker of a muscle in his cheek is his only response. And what could he possibly have said? By the time I get free of my family, there will be nothing here to come back to. No job, no apartment. Hayes will have moved on. And I’ll be so grossly in debt I won’t even be able to afford a dump like this.

We’re nearly done when I get to the beige dress. I’ll never even have a place to wear it again. Maybe Charlotte’s graduation from high school, or the baptism of Liddie’s next child. The only big events I see ahead of me now belong to my sisters, not myself. I’m going to stay in Kansas, living with my mom, and people will reference the one book deal I got like it was my only accomplishment. And all that pales next to the fact that Hayes won’t be beside me for any of it.

I find myself pulled against his chest—I didn’t even realize I was crying. And it only makes me cry harder, because how many more minutes of this will I have in my life? How many more times will I lean against him and breathe him in, and how the hell am I going to survive without it?

His mouth finds mine, and though I’m embarrassed by my tears, he doesn’t seem to mind. There’s a desperation to our kiss, but his hands are gentle as he removes my T-shirt and shorts, revealing me as if I’m something to be treasured. He’s above me, inside me, when he suddenly stops and holds my hair back from my face, looking at me as if I’m the only thing in the world that matters to him.

And I realize something: I never felt this way with Matt. I never felt content and heartbroken and complete with him. I never felt seen. He was never so deep in my blood that I felt his sadness and his joy as if it was my own, as if it mattered more than my own.

There wasn’t a sign from Matt because he was never right for me in the first place.

And Hayes is, but I’ve discovered it too late.

We’re quiet on the way to the airport, his hand tight around mine. He pulls up to the curb and flags down a porter to help with my bags.

It’s time to say goodbye, and I’m not ready for it.

My mouth opens but Hayes pulls me toward him instead, his hands framing my face. He kisses me hard, as if he can squeeze in a lifetime’s worth of kisses into a single moment. “Tell me what you want,” he says.

My throat swells. I want him. I want a life with him here. But even if he agrees to it now, over the course of the next year he’d wind up breaking my heart.

“Nothing. There’s no point. It isn’t going to happen.”

He stiffens, and the color seems to leech from his skin. A part of me wants to take it back, but we’re best off being honest about this. I can’t ask him to wait a year for me. It wouldn’t be fair, and eventually it would feel like one more failure to him, one more way he convinces himself Ella was right when it was never reasonable in the first place.

I go on my tiptoes and kiss his cheek one last time, memorizing the delicate scrape of his unshaved jaw, the smell of his soap, the feel of his skin. “Goodbye. And thank you. I’ve loved every minute of this.”

And then I turn and leave California, and the thing I loved here most, behind.