I shoot her a look, eyes hardening. A silent, sarcastic thank you for putting me on the spot.
“We’re leaving tomorrow, so I don’t want to stay out late,” I say, turning to Sascha. “Otherwise I’d join you.”
His crystalline gaze steadies onto mine. “That’s too bad.”
Dmitri lifts his brows, waiting as his brother stands there with his feet cemented to the sand.
“Hey, I’m going to be in the city after this for the next few months for work,” he says. “Mind if I look you up when I get there?”
I don’t have to look at Tierney to feel the mile-wide smile radiating off her face.
“Yeah, no, that’d be great,” I say, though I don’t one hundred percent believe myself.
Sascha dips his hand into the pocket of his striped board shorts and retrieves his phone before handing it to me, and I’m instantly taken back to the day Jude asked for my phone so he could program his number into my contacts.
I offer a gracious smile and add my number to his phone under “Love (real name) Aldridge,” and when I hand it back, he chuckles through his nose.
“Cute,” he says, gaze lifting back to mine like a gentle ocean breeze. “I’ll definitely call you.”
With that, he gives a quick wave, tells Tierney it was nice to meet her, and follows his brother up the beach.
“Oh, my god, Love.” Tierney leans toward me, her manicured fingers digging into my arm. “That was random.”
“Yeah.” I grab my wine and take a sip, watching Sascha’s strapping figure grow smaller in the distance.
“He’s sooooo into you.” Tierney rubs her hands together like the crazy person that she currently is.
“Okay.” I shrug, taking another sip.
“Oh, stop. Don’t act coy. He’s probably one of the hottest guys I’ve ever seen in the Hamptons in my life, and he couldn’t take his eyes off you for two seconds.”
“Whatever. He was just being nice.”
“Nice, my pregnant ass.” She rolls her eyes. “If he calls you and asks you on a date, are you going to go?”
“If he even calls me.”
“He will,” she says. “And when he does … you’re going to say yes. Right?”
Pulling in a breath of salty, oceanic air, I respond with a simple, “We’ll see.”
Heading in for the night a little while later, I trek upstairs and get ready for bed, realizing that I haven’t so much as thought about Sascha since he left.
The attention was flattering.
The conversation was enjoyable.
Asking for my number was a charming move.
But at the end of the night, Sascha is the least of my concerns because I still can’t stop wondering why Jude hasn’t read a single text of mine today.
Forty
Jude
* * *
They say if you rip a Band-Aid off quickly, it hurts less.
I don’t know about that.
I’ve spent the last twenty-four hours feeling the sting of that rip, but I know it’ll be nothing compared to what Love’s about to go through.
Any minute now, she’s going to come back to The Jasper, knock on my door, and eventually realize I’m not there anymore. Maybe the super will tell her I moved out. Maybe Raymond will tell her I’ve been blacklisted. That combined with the fact that she has no way to reach me is going to make her think I ghosted her, and knowing her, she’s going to blame herself. She’s going to think it’s because she told me she loved me.
And that’s how it looks.
She told me she loved me and I bolted.
Her love will eventually be displaced by revulsion, but that’s the way it was going to go down in the end anyway.
Strolling down Neptune Avenue, I stop next to a couple at a crosswalk and wait for the light. From the corner of my eye, I see them nuzzling, laughing, clasping hands and slowly bumping into each other, like they can’t go more than two point four seconds without touching in some capacity.
Wasn’t long ago, I knew that feeling.
The yellow-haired girl rises on her toes and kisses her boyfriend—the way Love always had to rise on her toes to kiss me—and my knotted stomach sinks.
The crosswalk lights and I get ahead of them because I can’t take another second of watching some of the happiest moments of my life play out in front of me in real time.
A block or so ahead, I see a “Coming Soon” sign in a storefront window, and once I’m closer, I realize it’s the building we toured for Agenda W.
Everything happened so fast, and it ended just as quickly.
I blinked and I met her.
I blinked and I lost her.
I lived for those moments in between.
My only wish now is that someday I might run into her, might get a chance to tell her that I’m sorry—even if she doesn’t believe me and even if it doesn’t matter. I just want her to hear those words from the very lips that had no right kissing her in the first place.
Keeping my stride, I make my way to the pharmacy on the corner to grab Piper’s insulin. An older man in a Mets t-shirt waits before me, but other than that, the place is unusually slow for this time of day.
I slide my hand in my back pocket to grab my phone, but there’s nothing there.
I must have left it at home.
“Next,” a woman’s voice calls a moment later as the man in front of me shuffles away with a white paper bag in hand.
“Here to pick up for Piper Cunningham,” I say, grabbing my wallet.
The pharmacy tech working the register gives a warm smile, her eyes gliding back and forth between her computer screen and me.
“Whoops,” she says, waving her hand in the air. “I typed the wrong name. What did you say your name was again?”
“It’s for Piper Cunningham,” I say, enunciating every damn syllable because I don’t have all day. Lo has to head to work soon and I’ve got to pick up a pizza for us on the way home.
“No, what’s your name?” she says, flashing her oversized smile. “For the notes.”
“Jude,” I say. “Jude Warner.”
“Thank you, Jude Warner.” She says my full name, and I think of Love. But then again, I’m always thinking of Love. “Okay, let me grab that for you. Two seconds …”
She trots off to the back and returns thirty seconds later with a white bag.
“Okay, with insurance, today’s total is going to be three-hundred six dollars and eleven cents,” she says.
I don’t bat an eye as I grab my card. Hunter had given me an advance, most of which I used to pay our rent for the next six months, and I’d also set aside several grand for Piper’s medicine. He hasn’t asked for any of it back, and I don’t think he ever will because fifty grand is probably pocket change to him.
“You look really familiar,” the girl says, pointing her finger and squinting as I sign for the meds. “Have we met before? Do I know you somehow?”
I’ve never seen this girl before in my life. If I had to guess, I’d say she’s all of twenty-two. I’ve got damn near an entire decade on her. I highly doubt our paths have ever crossed.