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Haylee snorted and closed her eyes. Her new roommate came in the front door, and not for the first time, Haylee wished she had privacy to have this phone call. But she was officially couch surfing since she couldn’t make rent this month and her old roommates kicked her out.

“No, well maybe a little, but it’s what the place stands for.” Haylee swallowed down the lump in her throat as she leaned back into the familiar cushions. Pulling her feet up to her chest and resting her chin on her knees, she continued, “and what I could have done there if I wasn’t such an idiot.”

“You aren’t an idiot. You just sometimes rush into things before you’ve really thought it through.”

“What’s the point in planning everything when nothing lasts and—” that damn lump returned to her throat, making it hard to speak “—and it’s not like we always have control over what comes next anyway.”

The meaning was clear in the silence that stretched between them. Haylee and Jackson had never brought up his name again, not together—not since his funeral.

“All right.” Finally Jackson broke the tension, his tone forced into a lightness neither of them felt. He skated right around the topic that was off limits. “So what’s the game plan going forward?”

“Walk in, tail between my legs?” Haylee let a nervous chuckle roll through her.

“Nope.” He sounded so sure of himself it threw Haylee for a moment. “You walk in there as though nothing happened. You said yourself you’ve already apologized. It’s time to move forward and keep going on with your plan to make them fall in love with you.”

Heat radiated outward from Haylee’s cheeks, her chest tightened, and the tops of her thighs pulsed. She couldn’t do that. She wasn’t the confident big brother that Jackson was. She was a secretary, for fuck’s sake.

“I just want to do some good.” Haylee’s words came out far less passionately than she had hoped, the warmth in her body distracting her.

“Then why do you sound so scared?” He was too damn good at this big brother gig sometimes.

“Because this is the closest I’ve ever come to really wanting something, and I just keep fucking it up.” She couldn’t lie to him, and if he pushed, she would tell him everything. But they couldn’t do that without talking about it.

“Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” Haylee imagined she could see Jackson winking at her, a half-cocked smile covering his scruffy face. God, she missed him.

“How many times have you watched that episode of Criminal Minds now?” Haylee smiled, truly, for the first time since early that morning.

“Just a few.” The laugh was light, and it lifted some of the residual tension that remained in Haylee’s chest.

They chatted for a few more minutes, Jackson catching her up on the more vital moments of his week before they said their goodbyes.

Some days he was the only thing keeping her grounded, keeping her from being unable to take that next step forward. He was the only one who believed in who she could be. And most of the more poignant things that came out of her mouth were things she had learned from him.

But could she really go back tomorrow as though nothing had happened? Could she rock up and bounce through her day, put a smile on her face as though she hadn’t colossally fucked up for Cherish? For Febe? Did it really matter who?

Even as she asked it, lying back on the futon in the dark with sleep eluding her, she knew just how much it mattered.

eleven

Cherish’s head throbbed as the fluorescent light in the foyer flickered through the heavy glass doors that blocked sound enough but did nothing for her light sensitivity. She had already put in a maintenance request to have it replaced, but the building was all but shut down now. She pulled out the bottle from her top drawer and dropped some pills into her hand. The last two pills in the bottle.

“Shit,” she muttered as she dry swallowed them. There was no way she was getting to the store tonight, not with damage control in full swing. Maybe she had some more floating around at home. It was possible, though her supply generally came to work because that was where she needed it most.

“Cherish, in here now!” Febe called from her office.

Before Cherish had even stood up, Febe had turned in her four-inch heels and disappeared into her dimmed room.

“And here we go.” The words were little more than a whisper because her head was already splitting into shards of glass. Noise would have been one more hammer slamming on it.

At least Febe’s office would be a relief for her eyes.

“When did she leave?” Febe paced back and forth in front of her desk, her voice low and hoarse.

Cherish forced herself to focus on Febe’s face and saw the hints of red around her eyes. She wished she could be certain if it was from the long day or from shedding tears. Perhaps it was both. It rubbed Cherish the wrong way that she didn’t know.

“At five o’clock.”

“On the dot, no doubt.” Febe scoffed, and Cherish took a deep breath.