Page 37

WHEN GIGI FINALLY shuffled out of her bedroom, she found me at the kitchen table with a pot of coffee already brewed. Buckley had kicked me off the couch a few hours ago, and I wasn’t about to fight him over it.

After I’d knocked last night, Gigi let me in without a word and gave me a blanket as I fell onto the couch next to Buck and went to bed.

Now she yawned and sank down at the table with an exhausted groan. “Remind me never to do a retirement home ever again.”

“Vienna Shores Retirement Home parties hard?” I asked.

“Bingo,” she deadpanned, “for five straight hours. ”

“At least it wasn’t six.”

She gave me a dead look. “At least I got paid on time. Thank god for old people.”

“Hey, more than I can say,” I admitted.

“I’d trade you any day,” she replied wholeheartedly. “At least you’re living the dream.”

My smile faltered. I looked down at my coffee. “Right, yeah.”

Gigi noticed. “Wanna talk about last night? Is it Sebastian?”

Yes, no. It was mostly about me. “Sometimes, I think I’d give just about anything to have a nine-to-five job where I can leave my work at the office,” I said. “Where I can have corporate health insurance, and overtime pay, and weekends off.”

My best friend frowned, confused. “I don’t know why you’d want to, but you can.”

I scoffed. “Sure.”

“No, you can ,” she reiterated. “You can do just that, but you don’t want to because it’s not good enough.”

That surprised me. “What does that mean?”

“You’d never be happy with a nine-to-five. And why would you want one? You’re living the dream.”

“Why do you keep saying that?” I muttered, more to myself than to her.

“Because it’s true, Jo. You’re so lucky.”

“I know .” I pushed my coffee cup away. “I … I’ve been …” The truth was lodged in my throat. But … then I thought about Sasha. About how he had no one to lean on, how he chose to have no one, and how small and bitter that made him. I was no better. “I can’t write, Gigi.”

The admission felt like both a nightmare I’d finally made real and a weight off my chest.

“I haven’t been able to write since Mom’s diagnosis. And it’s so hard to try. I just feel—I just feel empty. There’s nothing there. I can’t even remember the way I used to feel whenever I wrote. So yeah, I think an office job would be so much easier. I could just turn off my brain and …”

“And give up.”

I was silent.

“I don’t understand you sometimes,” she said, her voice sounding on edge and irritated. “You’re on top of the world. You are accomplishing your dreams—every one of them. You have everything you wanted! You got out, you’ve lived somewhere else, you found purpose— and you’re still not happy.”

I felt my spine go rigid. “How can I be happy when I can’t write, I can’t think, I can’t—I can’t do anything. And then I come home, and everything is falling apart around me.”

“ God ,” she went on, looking at the ceiling, “you just don’t see it.”

“Then please, enlighten me, Gigi.”

“Of course life will look like it’s falling down around you when you’re never here!

You left—you left , and I’m not faulting you.

But of course life goes on here and of course you’re not going to be in it anymore because you’re gone!

Things can’t stay the way they always were.

Do you know how exhausting that would be for everyone still here? ”

I felt shame creep up my spine. “I just wish that I’d stayed.”

“Do you really? Because I did stay, and what I wouldn’t give to be you. To feel, for a second , like my life matters to the world. That I’ll be missed by more than just a few old women who depend on me to read out their bingo numbers, or depend on me to barback at a run-down music hall, or—”

“When did Mitch propose to you?” I interrupted, feeling the barb of that last bit.

She sucked in a breath, like she’d been slapped. Then she looked away, her lips pressed tightly together. I inferred the answer from her silence.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my brother come out of the bedroom and spy us sitting at the table.

Speak of the devil. Buckley slid off the couch and went over to greet him with a lick to his arm.

“Good morning, ladies,” he said, kissing Gigi on the cheek and grabbing the dog leash from the coat hook.

Then he left out the front for Buckley’s morning constitutional.

After the door closed, I advised, “If you don’t want to marry my brother, don’t leave him hanging.”

“It’s complicated,” Gigi replied stonily.

“I’m sure,” I said, finishing my coffee. “I should go.”

She rolled her eyes. “I think if you want to stay, you should stay, Joni. But I think you’re conveniently forgetting that if you stay, you’ll lose a whole lot, too.”

“I already am,” I replied. And I was beginning to wonder if it was worth it. Going back to LA, doubling down. Continuing to fight for the thing I’d already sacrificed so much for. Even if it didn’t make me happy anymore. Even if it made me hate the very thing I used to love.

Or if I should …

If I should give up.

By the time Mitch came back in with the dog, I had changed back into last night’s clothes. I pecked him goodbye on the cheek, and left before I said something else I’d regret.