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Shae laughs. “Keep telling yourself that. Maybe eventually you’ll believe it. Nice chat,” she says, and winks at me.

When Shae turns her back, I immediately open my phone and go to Instagram. If Toni really is over me, the proof will be there.

“Audrey, don’t.” Greta reaches her hand out to cover my phone.

I pull it away. My finger swipes up through Toni’s feed, my stomach falling further with each new post I see of her, sliding right back into her nomadic lifestyle. The number of posts of her jumping off cliffs, hiking, and reviewing gear are dwarfed by the posts of her with different beautiful women apparently having the time of her life.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

TONI

I collapse on my new bed and exhale.

“God, moving is tiring,” I say.

“You haven’t even moved. I have,” Max says. She pirouettes and plops down beside me.

We stare up at the ceiling of what used to be Max’s bedroom but is now mine, and study the crack in the ceiling.

“Should I worry about that?” I ask.

“Landlord says nope, so you probably should,” Max says.

“Good thing I’m on the top floor.”

“Yeah, you won’t say that when you’re hauling groceries up three flights of stairs.”

After Christmas, Max had made good on her promise to find a new place and sub-lease this apartment to me. She left most of the furniture, which had been handed down to her from the previous tenant, and decorated her new place to fit her style, which is mostly black Ikea furniture with clean lines and matching Billy bookshelves along the walls that she’s eager to fill with books. We both wanted new couches and went shopping together, splurging on super plush ones that you could waste away an evening marathoning a nature documentary (me) or reading horror novels and paranormal romance (Max).

It’s the perfect set-up. I love the neighborhood and the rent is affordable enough (though not cheap) that I don’t feel like I am wasting money while traveling around the world for my job.

Max looks at me. “How are you doing?”

“I’m good. Great.”

“How are you really doing?”

I sigh and groan. “I’m tired and I have to put the fucking sheets on before I can go to bed.”

“Come on. I’ll help.” Max gets up and holds out her hands to me. I take them and she drags me up off my new mattress. She gets the sheets out of the trunk against the wall and throws a fitted sheet at me. I look at it. Powder blue.

“Are these the?—”

“Yes.”

I go to the trunk and get another set of sheets.

“Well, that’s a better answer to my question,” Max says drily.

I don’t say anything, because what is there to say? It’s been over two months since Audrey Adams broke my heart, and it still feels like there is an open, festering wound in my chest. But I’m not going to tell Max that. Or anyone. I’m sure everyone is as tired of hearing me talk about my heartbreak as I am of talking about it.

Valentine’s Day was particularly brutal, which is why I made sure to be as far away from Denver and the Fourteener Sports office as possible. New Zealand is beautiful in February, by the way.

We are putting on the pillowcases when I ask, “How was the opening last night?”

“Good. Glad you didn’t go, though.”

“Why?”