Page 29

. .. Six Months, Two Weeks, and Four Days Post-Breakup . . .

“Are you afraid?” Christian Richards loomed over me, arms folded, studying my craftsmanship as I worked.

He was a tall, slender man with a handlebar moustache like from an old Hollywood western.

Standing at six-foot-seven, he towered over everyone in the class.

He had long silver-blond hair pulled back into a ponytail.

“Sir?” I wasn’t afraid of him, per se, but I wanted his respect, and it seemed like lately I couldn’t do anything correctly. My work was suffering, and he was hypercritical of everything I was producing.

I lifted my safety goggles and rubbed my eyes. Something had felt off all day—my body wouldn’t cooperate, and my head was back in New York. More than usual.

“You’re working that wood like it’s going to bite you. So timid. You are not in control.” He crouched down. “You’re distracted. You’re not commanding the wood; the wood is commanding you.”

He was talking at me, but nothing was sinking in. I wanted to scream. His words were far away, like I was underwater and he was yelling from above the surface.

A hand on my shoulder jolted me to attention. “Mind if I show you?” Christian and I traded places, and with a brilliant, fluid ease, his hands melded with the wood. “All it needs is your guidance, and it listens.” He stood up and instructed me to do as he did.

The second I sat down, I noticed the date on the screen of my phone because Sienna texted. I wasn’t paying attention, and the blade of the saw snagged my thumb, and I blacked out.

I woke up a second later in a pool of my own sweat, lavender smelling salts held under my nostrils, my head cradled in Christian’s hand.

One of the other students handed me a cold bottle of water from a vending machine, and I could barely choke down a few sips.

“You might need stitches. Come on, I’ll take you to the emergency room,” Christian said. “Do you have somebody local you can call? Family? A friend?”

For months after I moved to Seattle, I had no friends.

I largely kept to myself. After spending Thanksgiving at my parents’ new place in South Carolina, Sienna convinced me to get on the apps.

That was how I met Cam Wallace, a freshman studying computer science at the University of Washington.

He messaged me instantly. He was the only guy around my age wearing a shirt and showing his face and willing to hold an actual conversation without it getting sexual once, so I agreed to meet him at a coffee shop.

So we built a solid friendship, and he helped me get through my heartache in being without Fielder.

Cam was the only person I thought to call.

There was no use calling Mom and Dad because they were in South Carolina, and I didn’t want to bother Sienna and Topher in Los Angeles.

There was nothing anyone could do for stitches.

Besides, I was still reeling over the revelation that she was dating Fielder’s cousin, a secret she told me I had to keep from our parents because neither her nor Topher wanted the families finding out.

Not that I could blame them. I didn’t want to know myself.

“Do you want to tell me what happened back there?” Christian asked, but as I waited with him for the doctor to see me, I had the overwhelming urge to call Fielder.

He was the only one I knew who would understand.

It was dark now, the harsh fluorescent lights contrasting the blackness outside.

I scrolled through all the green bubble texts.

I wasn’t texting Fielder every day anymore.

I gave up on that after I met and started hanging out with Cam because I started feeling less alone.

I had sent my last text to Fielder on Christmas Day, nearly two and a half weeks ago. Fielder still had me blocked.

But I had Matty’s number. I heard Nonno’s voice: Measure twice, cut once.

“Do you mind if I make a call?” I asked Christian, who nodded and excused himself. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and pressed the call button.

It rang once, twice, three times.

“H-hello?” Matty’s voice shook on the other end.

I nearly burst into tears. Not that Matty sounded at all like Fielder, but to be this close to him again felt like a fever dream. Maybe it was all the oxygen in the hospital. “Hey, Matty. It’s—”

“I know. What’s, um, up, Ma? I’m out with Fielder at the mall, remember?”

“Hey, Zia Rosa!” Fielder’s voice came through like a burst of sunshine, and I couldn’t speak. Then I heard him ask, “Everything okay?”

“Field, can you grab me a Mountain Dew? I can’t hear. I’m just gonna go over here for a sec.” Matty breathed into the receiver for a few paces. “What do you want, Ric?”

“I wanted to talk to Fielder.”

“No. Absolutely not,” Matty said. “He’s finally happy and stable and doing well.”

“Please—”

“Why?”

I couldn’t answer. I needed to talk to Fielder because he would understand why I was so distracted today of all days. Because I needed him. He was my support system, the voice I wanted to hear at the end of a hard day, and the one mistake I wished I could unmake. The only regret I’d ever had.

My breathing rapidly increased as one thought crossed my mind: I made a mistake.

“Please ask him, Matty.”

Matty didn’t say anything.

“You there?”

“Hold on.” Matty muttered a “fungool”—the bastardized version of “va funculo”—under his breath and muted me. A minute later, he came back. “He said, ‘No thanks.’ He’s got to film some content for this new vegan health bar that opened in the mall.” He lowered his voice. “I, um—sorry.” Click.

If I were hooked up to IVs and machines, this would be the part of the movie where I’d probably crash, and all the nurses and doctors would rush in with carts and bloodstained gowns trying to save me.

But life wasn’t a movie, and I didn’t die, though it felt like an emotional death all over again.

As I was reeling, Cam rushed into the ER from the rain.

“Ricky! Are you okay?” His wet curls pressed to his forehead were endearing. He took my uninjured hand and held it as the doctor stitched my thumb. Lonely, I craved that kind of attention. “What happened?”

I didn’t want to talk about it, but I knew I needed to. “Something was off. My body felt weird all day. All week, really. It’s been this way for a couple years around this time. Then I saw the date, the anniversary of my nonno’s death.”

Cam nodded. “You’ve told me how much he meant to you.”

“He was everything. I can’t believe I didn’t remember.

Or put two and two together. My head just wasn’t on right today.

” I nodded toward the bloody massacre in the doctor’s hands.

“Clearly, I miss him.” The words jumbled in my mouth, and tears pooled at the edges of my eyes and spilled down my cheeks.

I didn’t know if I was talking about Nonno or Fielder at this point, but I missed them both, and in that moment, I hated them both for leaving me alone.

“And I stupidly thought, ‘Hey, let me call my ex because he’d understand,’ and turns out that’s not the case at all. He’d rather post on Clock.”

I had been wrong earlier. Breaking up with Fielder wasn’t a mistake.

He was too obsessed with his phone and that damn Clock App, spending more time cultivating his online persona than focusing on supporting me.

He didn’t care about me at all anymore. I was still stuck on him, but Fielder had clearly moved on.

It was time that I did the same.

Maybe now , I thought, I can let him go and figure out who I am without Fielder Lemon.

Later that night after being discharged from the hospital, we hung out in Cam’s dorm room streaming the Barbie movie.

Cam moved closer and closer, and I let him.

The warmth of Cam’s body felt . . . nice, safe, familiar, yet new and daunting all at once. His fingers threaded between mine, and his thumb stroked the top of my hand.

“Let me take care of you,” he said.

“You’re doing a great job,” I whispered.

Cam’s curly hair had dried and fell just above his eyes, which pierced mine as he stared so deeply at me. “Just wait until my world-famous head rub.”

“What makes them world-famous?”

He shrugged. “You’ll just have to see.” Delicately, as if not to break me further, he slid behind me so that I rested my back to his chest. “Get comfy.” He started massaging my scalp, and I closed my eyes in pure bliss. “Can I tell you something?”

I moaned.

“I like you,” he confessed.

During “I’m Just Ken,” as Ryan Gosling was belting, he leaned in and kissed me.

I kissed him back.