"You went to Dad's today," she said. "For the ring."
"Yeah." That was all I could say, but it was enough. Cassie would know.
"Jack." She squeezed my hands once. "I've known you your whole life. I know what that house does to you. Whatever you did tonight—" She stopped and shook her head. "You're a good man, Jack. I know you don't believe that right now. But you're not him. You never were. Whatever you're telling yourself tonight, it's not the truth."
I wanted to believe her. Some part of me always wanted to believe her.
She stayed like that a moment longer, hands over mine, not saying anything else. Then she let go and stood.
"I'll make up the couch."
She said it like morning would make any of this easier to look at. I didn't tell her she was wrong. This would never feel easier. But I was too tired and too drunk and too far gone into whatever I'd made of this night to argue with the one person who'd never once stopped believing I was worth the trouble.
I didn't deserve that either.
But I took the couch.
Chapter Five
Madison
Islept for two hours, maybe less. Broken sleep, half-dreams I couldn't hold onto, and every time I surfaced the apartment was too quiet and the night came back all at once.
By six I gave up. Made coffee, finished packing. There wasn't much—one duffel, a backpack, the things that were mine and only mine. I'd called Lauren at midnight, standing in the kitchen still in my jacket, and she'd saidcome, obviously, take as long as you need.Lauren had a couch in Baltimore and a spare key and the good sense not to ask questions. I'd met her sophomore year and we'd stayed close in that low-maintenance way of people who didn't need to talk every week to mean something to each other. She was the right person to call at midnight. I was glad I had her.
I left most of it. The furniture was Jack's, or ours, or nobody's really—things that had accumulated without anyone deciding. The dishes, the space heater, all of it. The apartment already felt like it was forgetting me. I stood in the bedroom doorway for a moment, as if there were something left to memorize, then turned away. You can’t memorize a ghost.
I was standing at the counter with my coffee when I heard his key in the lock. It was the same sound it always was—three metalclicks and a heavy shove—but it sounded wrong in the quiet. Like someone breaking into a house that was already empty.
He looked wrecked. Same jacket, same jeans, his hair a mess and his eyes red at the edges. He stopped in the doorway and saw the bags and didn't say anything. He stood there with his key still in his hand, taking in the fact of them. I watched him do it. The way his face went through something and came out the other side blank.
Then he looked at me.
He still looked like my Jack. That was the part I wasn't prepared for—not the red eyes or the slept-in clothes, just that he looked exactly like himself. Like the person I'd spent all of yesterday waiting for.
We stood there. Neither of us said anything. The hum of the fridge was the only thing filling the gap where our life used to be.
Then: "Congratulations. On Hopkins."
I stared at him. The words felt like they’d traveled a long way to get to me.
"Thanks," I said. It came out flat.
"Baltimore?"
"Yes."
"When?"
"Today."
He nodded, like he was checking off a list. Like we were two strangers at a bus stop confirming a schedule. He looked at the floor and then back up at me, and his face did something I didn't want to read. There was, just for a moment, a flicker of the man who’d held me in the cold last winter, trying to find a way back through the fog.
"You'll do great things," he said. "You know that, right?"
He said it with a kind of hollow solemnity, as if handing me a diploma for a life he’d already decided he wouldn't be part of.
Three years.