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She shakes her head and tries to say something when I pause for a breath, but still, I go on.

“Only it didn’t work because it turns out I was so terrified finding myself would mean finding something you don’t like that I gave up on finding myself at all. So yeah, I did kind of waste a year of my life messing around, until…until I showed up here, and I met this girl, and…”

I trail off as another image of Naomi flashes across my mind in such bright Technicolor it almost hurts to look at her. I picture her staring into my eyes while we danced in the market until it felt like the whole crowd disappeared. There was just us and the music, and that was more than enough.

That was everything.

“And she saw me,” I say. “All of me. She knew I didn’t have it all figured out, and she didn’t care. She just wanted me to be me, whatever that looked like, and I didn’t know how to handle it because I’d never felt anything like that before.”

My mom presses a hand to her chest. Her purse has slipped down her arm, but she doesn’t move to fix it. She just stares at me as pain starts to take over her face, warping her features in a way I haven’t seen since the divorce.

“I don’t want to disappoint you, Mom.” My voice cracks, but I make myself continue. “I don’t want to hurt you either. I don’t want you to think I’m giving up on you, but…I also can’t hurt myself.”

She moves her hand from her chest to cover her mouth, her head shaking slowly from side to side. When she speaks from behind her fingers, her voice is hoarse.

“You…you don’t want the internship, do you?”

The instincts that have ruled me for so long are screaming at me to tell her I do want it, to tell her I’m sorry and hope she’ll give me another chance, or to at least say something that will soften the blow of the truth.

There’s no getting around the truth, though.

“It’s just not who I am anymore, Mom.”

She takes a stumbling step backwards. I want to scream from how much it hurts to see her hurting like this, but I can’t lie to her anymore. I can’t lie to myself.

“I’m still figuring out what I want,” I tell her, “but I know deep down, it’s not in Toronto, and that’s not because I don’t love you or want to make you happy. I just want to make me happy too.”

She drops both her arms to her sides. Her purse slides off and hits the floor, but she doesn’t seem to notice. She spreads her hands like she’s trying to pull her next words out of the air itself.

“Andrea, I…I’ve always wanted you to be happy. I just…I-I don’t know what to say.”

“You don’t have to say anything yet,” I say. “I know it’s a lot to take in. I get that. I just…I can’t get on that plane, Mom.”

She takes a shaky breath and then bends to grab her purse. Once she’s straightened back up and slipped the strap over her shoulder, some of her usual stony composure seems to have returned.

“I know you think that,” she says, “but have you considered maybe you’re…you’re doing all this for that girl? Because people leave, Andrea. People let you down. People give up, and—”

For the first time since she walked in here, my skin starts to heat with anger.

I’m not going to let her bring Naomi into this. This is between me and her.

“I’m the one who gave up,” I cut in. “I’m the one who let her down. I might have messed things up forever, but I’m still not moving back to Toronto, because that really isn’t about her. It’s about me. For once, it’s about me. I’d say the same thing even if I knew she’d never speak to me again.”

I have to squeeze my eyes shut as the possibility sinks in.

Naomi was right that night at the open mic; our story was just getting started, but I slammed the book shut in the middle of the first chapter, and now I might not ever be able to pry it open again.

“I just don’t want you making a mistake and ending up hurt,” my mom says. “I’ve always tried to keep you safe from that.”

“But you can’t,” I tell her, shaking my head. “You can’t keep me safe from that, and…I don’t want you to. I am hurt. It hurts every single time I think of her, but even if I feel like that for the rest of my life, I’d never give back what I got to have.”

A soft sound from over by the entryway makes us both freeze. The noise of the party makes it hard to tell, but I could have sworn I heard somebody gasp.

“Hello?” my mom calls. “Is someone there?”

The only answer we get is the continued pounding of the music outside. I share a glance with my mom and then backtrack a few steps so I can peer into the entryway.

All the air gets knocked out of my lungs.