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I forced out a shaky breath, making myself type a reply. The act of putting words together was like a lens, refocusing my consciousness, realigning me until things made a little more sense again.pais told you?

Kay.

I laughed awkwardly. I’d honestly forgotten Paisley had even mentioned Kay. The conversation was a blur.guess everyone’s hearing about it sooner or later with her in the equation…

she’s not exactly a master spy… I’m so confused how she hid her sexuality from her parentsAnd then before I could reply, a shorter message.Are you dating Paisley?

It felt like a tight grip around my throat. Whatever Paisley and I had been over this last week, we weren’t anymore. I blew up. Drove her away. A fun date got less fun when you brought up ghosts.

Should have just let myself enjoy them as dates. Should have known circumstances would pull us apart anyway, so why would it even matter?

Not really sure how to put it into a text, I hesitated for a long time before I called Emberlynn, and the call went through with aclick.

“I’m leaving,” I heard myself say.

She paused. “The—the bungalow thing? What, you only rented it for fifteen minutes?”

Had it only been fifteen minutes? I glanced at the clock on my phone before I realized, embarrassingly slowly, it was just a manner of speaking. I was turning into Pais. “Bayview.”

“Oh, what? When? Where are you going?”

She didn’t realize what I meant. I breathed in long and slow. I should have backed out—not even sure how I’d ended up here—but I found I couldn’t. “End of April. To New York. New job. New… horizons, I guess.”

“Oh…” Emberlynn’s voice trailed off into a little whisper, and we hung there in the tension of the pause for what seemed like forever. “Oh, you mean you’releavingleaving.”

I nodded. Not that she could see it, but… I couldn’t find any words right now. The silence was words enough.

“And… Crystal Lights?”

“Closing.” I swallowed a few times to get past the dryness in my mouth. “Just… don’t tell anyone. Please. I’m working on… working on telling everyone. I’ll get to it. Maybe at the festival.”

“Damn, Harps,” she said, her voice low. “How long have you known?”

“December.” The word came out bitterly, guilt sinking deep into my bones, but Emberlynn’s reply was softer than I thought. Softer than I deserved.

“You’ve been carrying it by yourself since then, huh?”

I swallowed hard, blinking away the burning at my eyes. “Most of that time. Paisley knows. Broke into my house, got into my computer, and read my emails.”

“Oh my god. I guess that’s Paisley for you…”

“So… no,” I said, my voice dry, gravelly, as I looked down, toeing the floorboards, the water’s surface visible in the thin lines between boards. “Not dates. Paisley is just taking me around… seeing everything Bayview has to offer before I leave.”

She paused. After a long, loaded silence, she said, “She couldn’t get you to stay, huh?”

“That’s not what it’s about.” Something seared in the back of my mind, though—a hazy memory dredged up from the conversation, ten minutes ago or twelve hours ago, I couldn’t tell. Paisley wishing I weren’t leaving. Me agreeing.

“You… you know she cares about you, though.”

Emberlynn and her girlfriend were both on the same page, unsurprisingly. Both here to rub it in my face, insisting Paisley was head-over-heels for me. “I doubt that.”

She cleared her throat. “Do you, really?”

“I really, really do. If she had feelings for me, she could show them somehow other than climbing into my window to steal my food.”

“And making out with you doesn’t count?”

I fumbled the phone. “Er—what do you mean?”