Midday, but the sky had gone dark.
This was it.
No last embrace. No kiss goodbye from the man who’d kissed her so hard this morning, her mouth still felt swollen and soft.
She’d told him the truth, and he’d told her their future was a fantasy. Her worst fear—that she was doing with Ben the same thing she’d done with Dan. That she had no other mode, no other way of being in the world except this one, false way.
She’d known, of course. She’d known, but she hadn’t wanted to know.
He’d never invited her to love him. They had always been temporary, from the first night’s truce over tacos.
Stupid girl, to have fallen for a man like him.
Stupid heart, to keep hoping even now. Even as he backed his van out of the parking space.
Even as he turned the wheel, straightened the tires, and drove away.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Allie looked at the sky. It was easier than looking at her sister.
May stood alone in the parking lot, watching the empty road where Ben had been and wasn’t anymore.
The sky wasn’t much more pleasant to look at. It was a dirty gray, heavy with rain that wasn’t falling. Wind whipped the branches of the trees and blew May’s hair into a whirling gold-brown aura around her head.
Allie’s wedding day sucked.
She sucked. She’d been mean to her sister, and then she’d gone off and hid in a train car while May had been getting dumped. She wouldn’t even have known it happened if Mom hadn’t seen Ben leave and then come to fetch her.
Ben’s gone. May looks terrible. I don’t know what happened, but you have to talk to her.
Someone had to anyway. Mom was out of the question. At times like this, she was always trying to identify the bright side, and you ended up feeling like a jerk for casting such a pall on her day.
Matt was MIA. That left Allie.
But damn it, she wasn’t the one who comforted May. It went against the natural order of things. Allie was the jerk, and May was the fixer.
A gust of wind whipped her hair into her eyes. As she brushed it away, a howl rose from the parking lot. Not a crying sort of howl—a full-throated yell of the frustrated, angry variety. The kind of noise Allie made when she dropped her keys for the third time or broke a dish in the sink or whanged her funny bone on the door when she was trying to shove three dogs outside at once.
The scream said, I have fucking had it.
May never howled.
She also never jumped ship when the going got rough, but she was walking from the lot now, her long legs eating up the asphalt.
“Where’s she going?” Nancy said. “She’s supposed to get her hair done in an hour.”
“I’m not sure.” Allie lifted onto her tiptoes, her body straining to keep May in view as she winked in and out of sight between parked cars.
“May!” her mother called. “Where are you headed?”
May didn’t turn, didn’t slow, didn’t stop, and Allie found herself bouncing heels to toes. Straining toward her sister.
“Go on.”
“Hmm?” she asked.
“Go after her,” Mom said. “You’re dying to.”
But Allie didn’t want to go after May. She wanted to go with her. With an apologetic smile, she took off running.
“Wait up!” she shouted. “May!”
She had to chase her for a full block. Finally, she caught up with May as she was passing by the elementary school across the street from the museum.
“Where are you going?”
“I have no idea.” May sniffled and wiped her fingers beneath her eyes, then on her jeans. She didn’t slow.
“Mom’s going to have kittens if we’re not back there in a few minutes.”
“I’m finding it impossible to care about Mom right now.”
“Understandable.” Allie had to trot to keep up. She pressed her hand against the stitch forming in her side and tried to think what to say to this version of her sister. The one who howled. “I’m sorry he left,” she tried.
“I’m not.”
“You’re not?”
May cut a glance at her. “No. I was sorry for a minute, but now I’m really fucking angry that he left.” She kicked a stick off the road without even breaking stride. “He said the whole idea of our staying together was a fantasy, and I crumpled into this pathetic little paper ball of refuse, but you know what? He’s wrong. I don’t accept it. It isn’t okay with me. I know you have no idea, because I was gone for so many days, and then we were pretending he was Andy’s secretary so you didn’t get to know him. But he’s wrong. He’s plain wrong, and I can’t be sorry he left. I can only be irritated as fuck.”