Everything crashes into me. Stresses that I don’t like to confront. I’m not even ready to bear all of it right now. “Can we run?” I ask. “I’ll race you down the street.”
His features turn grave, but he nods. “Yeah. Get your shoes on—”
My phone rings, cutting him off. I look at the Caller ID. “It’s Mikey. I guess…” I have to go. I meet Ryke’s gaze, and he just shakes his head.
“I don’t want to fucking leave you like this,” he says.
“I’ll be fine.”
“Are you going to be able to last the whole flight, sitting in your fucking seat, not able to get up and move around that much?”
It sounds more confining now than it did a couple hours ago, only because my mom suffocated me with this news. “I don’t have much of a choice.”
“We all have choices,” he says. “Some are just harder to make than others.”
“Don’t worry about me,” I tell him. “I want you to go to California and climb those mountains.” I pause. “And be safe.” He can die out there. With no rope, no backup safety, he’s relying only on his training, his hands and body. One wrong move and he can slip and fall. He doesn’t talk about the risk that much, and I don’t want to dissuade him from pursuing the three-mountain, free-solo climb in Yosemite. It’s been his lifelong goal, and I won’t keep him from that.
“You too,” he says, his voice low and strained.
This is the part where we should hug again, but so many unresolved issues linger, things that my mom dumped and deserted.
We don’t touch.
We don’t say another word.
We just leave each other with a maybe—a sort of acceptance to move on. I can already see myself on that plane, visualizing him with another girl. Everything about this trip to Paris sucks, but I won’t screw over a handful of designers just to come back to Philly.
I can’t.
< 10 >
RYKE MEADOWS
Daisy is gone. With the time difference, I haven’t even had the chance to talk to her. She’s too busy to fucking call at a decent hour, and so I have no idea if she’s sleeping or if she’s been awake for two days straight. I can’t stop thinking about the last look on her face—the one of pure devastation. Like someone physically ripped out an organ from her body. I’ve seen that expression before, and it only comes when she feels trapped.
I just have to trust that she’s fine.
And I try to ignore the fact that I gave her permission to fuck other guys. I hated that, and even knowing that she may be hooking up with someone right now—it boils my blood. But I can’t stomach screwing girls here while she waits for me either. Because she’ll be waiting forever, and it’s not fucking fair to her.
My brother lies on a weight bench, and I spot him. The gym is almost empty this early in the morning, the weight room desolate besides my brother, Connor and me. We always meet at 6 a.m. to avoid the paparazzi.
“How’s Lily?” I ask, my eyes flickering over to Connor as he does leg presses while watching Bloomberg on the flat screen television overhead.
“Fine,” Lo says, lifting the heavy bar off his chest with a grunt. I grab it from him and set it in the holder. He sits up, wiping his forehead with a towel. “How’s not babysitting?”
“I wasn’t babysitting Daisy.” Since her going away party, I’ve been on the same rocky fucking road with my brother whenever her name is mentioned. It’s not different. It’s the fucking same shit over and over again. I’m used to it by now.
Lo stares at the towel in his hands. “I still don’t understand how you’re friends with her. Like…what do you talk about?”
He’s fishing. “We’re not fucking each other.”
Lo glares. “I didn’t say you were, but now I’m thinking it.”
I roll my eyes. Maybe I’m overanalyzing everything. I don’t fucking know anymore. “We talk about normal things. Motorcycles, sports…” sleep, medication, siblings, parents. “…food.”
“She looked really thin at her going away party,” Connor says, off his machine and heading towards us. He grabs his water out of his gym bag. “Rose fought with Samantha about it over the phone for an hour.”
I pop one of my knuckles. “Her mom is putting too much fucking pressure on her to maintain that weight.”
“Maybe she’ll gain some while she’s in Paris,” Lo says, more optimistic than he usually is. I think he’s just happy she’s not around me.