The gray morning matched my mood perfectly, colorful leaves dripping wet from the way the clouds hugged them. It was quiet except for where the dew dripped down into the grass, a soft pit, pat, pit, pat that drew me outside like a magnet. The distinct smell of fall decay hung in the air, and I welcomed the wet morning with open arms. I was so sick of the sunshine, of the world continuing to spin on without a care.
I wrapped myself in a blanket and went outside on the back porch just so I could sit with the fog.
With the blanket wrapped around me, the scent of Leo that still barely clung to the hoodie I’d stolen from him wrapped around me, too. I closed my eyes and inhaled it along with the cool morning air, and just when I thought they’d dried up, my eyes welled with tears again.
It’d been almost a week since I moved out of The Pit and back home with my parents.
It was a last resort, one I’d only chosen after Margie informed me the house wouldn’t be ready for me to move back in until after the holidays. She and I had both decided it was time to let me out of the lease, for us to go our separate ways while she fixed everything up. I couldn’t wait in limbo any longer, and this time, I really didn’t have a choice.
I had to go home.
It had killed my pride to make the call. I’d called Dad, of course, who didn’t ask a single question. He just said he was on his way. And while hearing his voice, his concern, his love for me filled my aching heart with warmth, I knew when he pulled into The Pit, Mom would be with him, locked and loaded with a million questions.
I’d been right.
She’d been tight-lipped and quiet while we loaded up the SUV with my belongings — including Palico. The roommates had helped, minus Leo, who had left because I’d asked him to. I didn’t miss the hard edge of my father’s expression as he watched three male college athletes interact with his daughter. But Kyle, Braden, and Blake showed him and my mother both the highest respect.
They also gave me the best hugs of my life when it was time to leave, and I tried not to cry as we said goodbye.
As soon as we were in the car and on the highway, Mom started in.
She berated me with questions the entire drive home. How in the world did you end up there? What were you thinking? You should have called us. You should have moved home. This is why you never should have moved into that decrepit house to start with. You should be in college, in a dorm room that’s safe and passes a thorough inspection. How in the world did you end up with a cat? And what does that Margie character say of this? You better be getting your deposit back. I can’t believe you’ve been living with men without our permission. You could have been killed, or worse—
My father putting his hand on her knee had silenced her, and while he hadn’t so much as looked at her when he did it, I watched Mom take her first real breath, cover his hand with hers, and fall silent.
Mercifully.
I’d slept in my old room, which was pretty much the same, except that it was painted brighter now, with a bed set only my mother would love, and there was a treadmill in the corner facing out of my favorite window — the one I used to gaze out of as I sketched. It wasn’t any easier to sleep in here, not with memories of high school clinging to the space. I stared at the television that I used to play Xbox on with Leo, heart lurching every time.
I so desperately wanted to get high, but I didn’t have any edibles on hand, and I knew I couldn’t sneak a joint — not in my mother’s house. It didn’t matter if I walked down the street to smoke it, she’d find out.
So, I tossed and turned soberly through the night before Dad knocked on my door at two in the morning, his walking sneakers in hand.
We didn’t talk as we walked, and unlike when I was younger, it didn’t really help me sleep. But it did make me feel marginally better — less alone, at the very least.
And the next morning, I gave my mom all the answers she was looking for.
I also told her and Dad both about Nero.
Naturally, they wanted me to go to the police. They couldn’t see reason, not even when I pointed out that it was his word against mine, that if I moved against him, he’d move against Leo and me both. Mom swore the law would side with me, which made me laugh because clearly she hadn’t paid attention to any similar court cases in the last hundred years. Dad seemed to understand why I was hesitant, but he was like Leo. He wanted to murder Nero. And while my shot of ever working in Boston was already obliterated, I didn’t want to poke the bear that had the power to annihilate my career completely.
It was only after I begged and pleaded with them through my tears that they agreed to let me handle it the way I wanted to.
That’s the thing no one tells you about being a victim to harassment — that not only do you lose power during the assault, but afterward, too, when you’re expected to follow rules put in place by people who have no idea what you’ve been through or what’s at stake.
What my parents didn’t understand was that I needed to take back control of the situation. I needed to be the one to decide what happened next, to determine how much I let this incident impact me and the rest of my life.
All I wanted was to wipe my hands of Nero and the memory and move forward.
I wanted to live on without ever thinking about him or that shop again.
And I never wanted to give him the satisfaction of thinking he’d so much as slowed me down, let alone stopped me.
After the dust settled, once the questioning was done and Dad convinced Mom to leave it alone, I was finally able to breathe.
But each breath was a fiery assault on my lungs, because now all I could think of was Leo.
It was sick, how I knew I needed space from him and yet I stared at my phone all damn day wishing to see his name pop up on the screen. I’d asked him to leave me alone, and he’d listened — even when I knew he didn’t want to. He was giving me what I needed, and my masochistic ass was over here wishing he wouldn’t, wishing that he’d say fuck what you think you need and burst through the door.
But if he did, I knew I’d be upset.
I’d take it as further proof that I couldn’t trust him, that he didn’t care about what I needed, what I asked of him. It would hurt me. It would piss me off.
And yet, not hearing from him at all killed me.
I was a chaotic disaster, one he didn’t deserve to put up with. I was so angry with him, so betrayed by his actions — and yet, he was the only one I craved to make me feel better about it all.
The only one I knew could actually do it.
I’d beaten these thoughts around in my brain so much over the week that it felt like mush, and I sat outside in the cool morning fog with a dazed look on my face, my head floating in the mist, body on autopilot and just keeping me alive.
Someone opened the patio door, and Palico sauntered through it and right up to the couch I was sitting on. She hopped up, meowing before she nudged me as if to say, “Let me inside that thing, I’m cold.” I couldn’t smile, but I did open up the blanket long enough for her to make her way in. I swore, she knew something was wrong. She’d been glued to my side since we first arrived.
I didn’t know how long I had been sitting there when suddenly a hot mug of tea was presented in front of my face.
I blinked, coming back to earth and following the hand that held the mug up to find my mother staring down at me.
The older I got, the more I saw how much I favored my mother. It wasn’t just her long, thick hair that I had, too, or her fair skin. It wasn’t her plump bottom lip that matched mine, or the way our eyes were the same emerald green. It was that I saw the sadness that felt so at home in my eyes reflected in hers, saw the determination that filled me emanating from her, too. She held her chin high, her shoulders square, never afraid to say what she meant or to face anything that scared her.
I was more like her than I ever realized before.
When I didn’t immediately take the mug from her hand, she nudged it closer, and I held the blanket tight around me with one fist as I reached my other hand out to take hold of the handle. Once I had it, Mom sat down primly on the couch next to me, sitting nearly on the edge of it as she daintily lifted her cup to her mouth and took a sip.
Our outdoor furniture was so spotless it looked like it belonged inside, the white cushions crisp and clean, the teak wood that framed it pristine and beautiful. I remembered when Mom picked out the set, when Dad had instructed the movers where to put it all just to have Mom change her mind and Dad and my brother had to move it all around again.
But once she had it the way she liked it, it never moved again.
It also never wore a speck of dust longer than a few hours.
I didn’t have anything to say, not even to acknowledge my surprise at her joining me on the deck. She’d barely talked to me since I’d been home — mostly because I’d holed up in my room — and whenever she did talk to me, it was to press me for what I was going to do next, how I was going to move on.
As if I knew.
But I was thankful for the hot tea, the first sip warming me all the way down to my toes.
“Thank you,” I croaked, my throat in shit shape after all the crying and late nights of no sleep.
Mom nodded, her back still ramrod straight as she took a sip of her own tea and then cradled the mug between her hands.
She looked out over the beautifully curated yard she’d created over the years — the garden that would make Holden have wet dreams, the man-made pond and fountain, the stone walkway through the beautiful trees and bushes and flowers. Birds and squirrels alike made themselves comfortable, eating the seed Mom put out each morning and swimming in the baths on hot days. This morning, however, it was quiet and still, the fog slinking in heavy patches through the space.
“So, are you going to tell me more about this boy?”
I let out a long breath, a moment of regret sinking in my stomach for having told her and Dad about Leo at all. But what happened between him and Nero was part of the reason I wanted to leave the whole situation alone, so it had to be said.
“I’d rather not,” I confessed.
“Because I’m such an evil, emotionless monster that I wouldn’t understand?” Mom assumed with a harsh laugh.
“Because I’m having trouble breathing without him in my life,” I shot back. “And I don’t really care to hold my bloody heart out for you to dissect.”
Mom turned to face me, her brows hinged together. And for the first time in years, I saw genuine concern in her eyes, like she hated that I was in pain and she couldn’t do anything about it. She’d used to look at me that way when I was sick, as if she’d rather be the one with the stomach flu than to see me go through it.
“Maybe talking about it will help rather than hurt,” she offered.
I didn’t respond. I’d talked at length about it to the girls, each of them listening and waiting for when I asked them for their advice. I was thankful they didn’t just offer it without the cue, because the truth was I didn’t know if I was ready to do anything about any of it.
Because if I was to do something, that would mean one of two things — either I’d forgive Leo and go back, or I’d not forgive him and leave him behind.
Both options made my chest impossibly tight.
“How did you meet?” Mom asked when I didn’t speak.
A laugh of a breath left my nose. “Playing Halo.”
She made a face. “That God-awful game we got you for your fifteenth birthday?”
“The very one.”
I expected her to wrinkle her nose in distaste, but instead, it was like something clicked. She paused, then smiled, then sat back a little on the couch, relaxing next to me.
“Huh,” she mused. “Well, that explains a lot.”
“How so?”
“You were so weird that summer,” Mom said. “The most emotional I’d ever seen you. I blamed it on being fifteen. That’s when you really started doing your makeup. You’d steal mine, you little brat,” she added. “I remember fretting to your father about how we had a teenager now and our real problems were about to begin.”
“My wife, fretting?” Dad said, and I turned in time to see him swing out the back door with a coffee in his hand. He sank into the rocking chair across from us with a smile. “I can’t imagine.”
Mom shot him a glare, but a smile threatened the corner of her lips. Just that little interaction alone made my chest ache, made me clamp my hands together to keep from reaching for my phone to call Leo.
As if Palico sensed it, she nudged my knuckles so I would pet her, instead.
“But then…” Mom continued, frowning. “Not too long after school started, you really changed. And I don’t mean in the petulant teenager way. I mean… you were hurt.” She paused. “Your father and I knew something happened, but we didn’t know what.”
“And you didn’t ask,” I added.
Mom tilted her head a little higher. “Maybe we could have done better,” she admitted. “But let’s be honest — you’ve never been exactly easy to talk to.” She waved her hand between us as if I was illustrating her point at this very moment.
And I supposed I was.
The fact that my mom was showing an actual interest in my life and not the one she wished I was living had me softening a bit. Maybe it was that along with being tired of feeling so alone even in a house with my family that had me opening my mouth and spilling everything.
I told them about that summer with Leo, about what happened when school started. I told them about the hell I went through with the teasing over that stupid drawing, and how I never lived down that awful nickname. Then, I fast forwarded to moving across the street from him, to this summer with the pipes and moving into The Pit and how, slowly, everything between us unfolded.
It was somehow colder by the time I finished, even though the sun was starting to clear out some of the fog. It was still a cloudy day, and when the sun dipped behind one of those clouds, I wrapped myself and Palico up tighter in the blanket with a sigh.
“And then, when all of this happened with Nero…” I shook my head, not wanting to relive it. “Leo didn’t listen to me. He didn’t stay when I begged him to, didn’t take a second to think about what consequences his actions would have.” Emotion had me struggling to swallow. “I lost everything I’d worked for in the blink of an eye,” I whispered. “And in turn, Leo lost my trust.”
Dad let out a heavy sigh. “I’m sorry, Mare Bear.”
I nodded, not sure what else to say. Mom was quiet, and I didn’t dare look at her for fear of the judgment I’d find. I opened my mouth to say that it would all be fine, I just needed some time, when suddenly…
Mom laughed.
Not a quick, sarcastic lash of a chuckle, either, but a full on, belly-deep, had to put her cup of tea down so as not to spill it laugh. She tilted her head up to the sky as it barreled out of her, and then tears were streaming down her face, and she was wiping them away as she laughed even harder.
I didn’t laugh with her. In fact, I watched her like something I should be afraid of before casting a worried glance at my father, silently asking if she was having a stroke. Palico was so startled by it all that she skittered off my lap and used her paw to open the door Dad had left ajar, retreating inside.
“I’m sorry,” Mom finally managed, the words a high-pitched squeak as she still struggled to catch her breath. She reached over and squeezed my knee with her hand, as if we were best friends just yukking it up together and I’d just told the most hilarious joke she’d ever heard. “It’s just that you’re so much like me, it terrifies me sometimes.”
That made my other eyebrow shoot up to join the first.
She waved me off before I could even ask, wiping tears from her face as she sat up straight again. “Ask your dad what happened on our three-month anniversary.”
I wrinkled my nose. “You guys celebrated a three-month anniversary?”
“Oh, we celebrated everything back then,” Dad said with a smile that said he was reliving a memory. “Every day I didn’t screw up my chance with your mother was a special occasion.”
“And I didn’t make it easy for him,” Mom added.
“Imagine that,” I mused.
My parents shared a knowing look.
“We had gone bowling,” Dad explained. “And long story short, some Ivy League prick kept hitting on your mom, regardless of the fact that we were clearly there together.”
“This guy was a smoke show,” Mom said.
“Hey!” Dad frowned.
“And he was massive. At least a foot taller than your dad and a hundred pounds heavier — all muscle.”
“I had muscle,” Dad said, taking an angry sip from his coffee.
“Anyway, this guy just kept on, but I was handling it. Look, if I didn’t want someone’s attention, I wasn’t afraid of them thinking I was a b-i-t-c-h when I told them to get lost.”
“You can say bitch, Mom,” I interjected.
She ignored me and continued. “But toward the end of the night, when I went to turn in our shoes, this guy caught me at the counter and put his arm around me. Your dad couldn’t see straight, nor could he think straight, because he just ripped the guy off me and plowed his fist right into his nose.”
My jaw dropped. “Dad?”
Mom looked almost proud as she nodded. “Oh, yeah. Laid him out flat and then we were thrown out of the bowling alley. We weren’t allowed to go back, either. The guy tried to press charges, too, but luckily for us the judge could see they were just a couple of stupid kids.”
“Not that the judge’s verdict helped me with your mom at all,” Dad piped in. “Because she’d completely written me off.”
“I was so done,” she agreed. “I told him I refused to spend my life with a pig-headed macho man who wouldn’t respect me when I asked him to back off and let me handle myself.”
My stomach turned with how familiar that sounded, and how being on the listening end of someone else’s story made me feel a different way about that decision.
“But you took him back,” I said, because clearly.
Mom sighed, smiling at Dad. “After taking a few weeks to cool down, yes, I did.”
“What changed your mind?” I asked.
“I didn’t really change my mind,” she said. “I still thought he was a big dummy for acting that way and I told him that. But I realized that as much as I was annoyed by what he did, I also found it kind of sweet. I liked that he wanted to protect me. I liked that he cared about me so much that he couldn’t think straight and that he’d literally punched someone in the nose.”
I smiled a little, remembering how I’d felt seeing Leo lay Nero out on the ground. I’d been horrified, angry, and yet…
It had also been quite hot.
“What she’s forgetting to say is that she finally stopped being so stubborn and ignoring my flowers and phone calls and desperate apologies enough to see that I was crazy about her,” Dad said. “Literally. I loved her so much I did crazy things, like punch dudes twice my size.”
“In the end, what I realized more than anything was that while it wasn’t the way I wanted the situation handled, it was how your dad showed he loved me. He didn’t punch that guy for his own satisfaction,” Mom said. “He did it because he saw someone touching me when I didn’t want to be touched.”
“I saw my girl being threatened,” Dad amended. “And I didn’t care about anything else but protecting her.”
“Ew,” I said with a laugh. “That’s so weird but also sweet?”
Dad beamed like I’d called him a superhero.
“Anyway,” Mom continued, turning to face me. “All I’m saying is that maybe in a weird, caveman way… this was Leo showing his affection for you.”
“He lost you once, remember?” Dad added. “Does it not make sense that, now that he had his chance with you again, he would be a little crazy at the thought of someone you trusted hurting you the way Nero did?”
I pressed a hand to where my chest felt like it was splitting in half.
Why did it make so much sense when my father said it? And why was I just now realizing that my stubbornness came from my mother — the very one I’d always dug my heels in to defy?
“Let me ask you this,” Mom said when I didn’t respond to them. “Do you still care about him?”
I nodded.
“And does it make you sick to think of losing him?” Dad asked.
My eyes filled with tears on another nod.
Mom chuckled, grabbing my arms in her hands and giving me a little shake. “Then forgive him, stubborn girl. And believe him when he says he’s learned his lesson. Trust me — you can do much worse than a man who loves you so much he can’t see straight.”
That made me burst into tears, and Mom pulled me into a hug. Dad was enveloping us both in the next breath, and I felt like a little girl again. It gave me permission to fall apart.
When I could catch my breath again, I swiped the tears from my face. “I’m scared,” I admitted.
“Well, obviously,” Dad said. “Why do you think you pushed him away in the first place? This was never about the fight with Nero.”
“It’s about the fact that you’re in deep,” Mom chimed in. “And it scares you to death. So, to combat that fear, you pretend like you’re in control. You push him away just to prove that you can.”
“It’s like you understand the feeling or something,” Dad mused.
Mom nudged him with a smile.
Then, my phone rang.
It made all of us jump because I had the ringer turned all the way up. And when we all looked down to find Leo’s name on the screen, Mom swatted my knee.
“Speak of the devil,” she said.
I just blinked, heart in my throat as I stared at the photograph on my screen. It was us on the couch at The Pit, me in Leo’s hoodie that I was still wearing now and him wrapping me up from behind. He was kissing my cheek while I laughed and tried to shove him off me. It was dark and grainy and blurry. It was him who’d taken the picture even though I’d threatened him not to.
It was my favorite now.
I picked up the phone with numb fingers, and Dad kissed my hair before grabbing Mom’s hand and tugging her inside to leave me alone.
I tapped the green button on the screen to accept the call.
And then Leo was there.
He looked so good it hurt.
He must have just had a shower because his hair was slightly damp, a bit mussed, his jaw freshly shaven. There were dark bags under his eyes, but they lit up when I answered, and he sucked in a breath of surprise, dropping his chains that he’d been chewing on.
“Hi,” he breathed.
My heart.
It squeezed so painfully tight I hiccupped.
“Hi,” I said.
Leo licked his bottom lip, shaking his head. “I’m sorry, I… I know I said I’d leave you alone. And I am. I will,” he amended. “I just…”
He swallowed, unable to finish the thought. And for a moment, we just stared at each other, as if the other wasn’t real.
“Can you check your mail?” he finally said. “I sent you something.”
I frowned, getting up and pulling the blanket snug around me as I padded inside. Dad always dumped the mail on the kitchen counter before Mom would sort through it, and everything was already in neat piles.
There was a large, thick envelope addressed to me.
I propped the phone against a candle and carefully opened it, pulling out a brick red jersey with gold trim sleeves.
“The rivalry game is in two days,” he said as I unfolded it. I held it up, using it as a barrier to cover my smile when I saw that it was his jersey, the number thirteen and his last name sprawled across the back.
I lowered it, finding Leo staring back at me hopefully.
“I have a ticket waiting for you at will call,” he said. And before I could reply, he hurriedly added, “You don’t have to come. I understand if you don’t want to. I just… I wanted you to know that you have a ticket.” He swallowed, shaking his head. “No, I wanted you to know that I want you to be there.”
I swallowed, looking down at the jersey in my hands with my parents’ words circling in my mind.
“I’m sorry I went back on my promise to leave you alone,” he said, the corner of his mouth crooking up a bit. “But to be fair, I warned you I’d likely leave you disappointed.”
Someone yelled his name in the background, and he cursed just as Palico hopped up onto the table. I carefully draped the jersey over the back of one of our dining chairs and pulled the cat into my arms.
“I have to go,” Leo said. “We’re—”
The phone was snatched out of his hand then, and after a dizzying blur, Kyle was staring back at me.
“Mary!” He gasped. “Palico!”
That caused a scuffle behind him, and then Braden and Blake were flanking his sides, all battling to fill the screen.
“Palico!” Braden and Blake said in unison, and then they were all fussing over the cat, telling it how much they missed it while I bit back a smile and held her at the right angle for them to adore her.
“We miss you, too, Mary,” Braden said. “I need my yoga buddy.”
“And I need to know how you ever kept this place clean,” Blake added grimly. “Because we’re struggling here.”
“Pancakes on Sunday morning aren’t the same without you,” Kyle added, and with each word they said, my eyes stung more.
“Miss you guys, too,” I managed.
Leo wrangled the phone back, and after punching each of his roommates in the arm, he looked down at the screen. “Sorry about that.”
I smiled. “It’s okay.”
Another long silence fell between us. I wanted to say something, but I didn’t know what. I still hadn’t sorted through all the thoughts swimming in my head, so I just stared at him with the fiercest longing in my chest.
“You’re wearing my hoodie,” he said.
I glanced down at where I held Palico in my arms, the blanket on the ground at my feet now. Then, I looked back at the screen and helplessly shrugged, still unable to put words to anything.
Of course, I’m wearing your hoodie, I wanted to say. I’m pretending its arms wrapped around me are you.
“Okay, well. I’ll let you go,” Leo finally said. He swallowed, opening his mouth like he wanted to say something else. But he closed it again.
“Good luck at the game,” I managed.
He nodded, and just before the call was cut, I saw his face twist like it physically pained him to end it.
I sat Palico down then, picking up the jersey again and smoothing the fabric between my fingers. I brought it to my nose, inhaling, but it was brand new and didn’t smell like anything at all, let alone like the player it represented.
But I remembered that smell, even without it being present.
Leo was a part of me — his scent, the way his arms felt around me, the vibration of his deep-chested laugh, the softness of his heart.
And I was finally ready to admit what I’d known all along.
I was terrified of him hurting me again, of losing him, of giving him my trust only to end up with a broken heart.
But I didn’t have a choice in the matter.
It was a risk I would take, one I couldn’t escape, because the alternative was to give him up now.
And I couldn’t do that.
I loved him.
I loved him.
The realization shocked me so much I nearly fell over, but at the same time, it was as if it had been there all along. It was like my brain was saying, “Duh, bitch,” while I grappled with the new discovery.
I still had so much to figure out. I still wanted to hold Nero responsible for what he did to me, for what he probably did to others. I still had to figure out where I went from here, what my future held.
But I knew that regardless of how any of that unfolded, I wanted to do it all with Leo by my side.
Something between a laugh and a sob ripped out of me, and I covered my mouth, shaking my head as I stared at the jersey still in my other hand.
Then, I picked up my phone again, dialing the group chat on a video call.
Julep answered first, and then Riley, with Giana’s screen going black at first before her sleepy face came into view, her hair a wild bird’s nest. When they were all there, I propped the phone against the candle again and held up the jersey.
“Alright,” I said. “How the hell do I style this thing?”
I was met with a chorus of delighted screams.
