Chapter 20 - The Write Off

10 Years Ago

Senior Year, Second Semester

I knew life would change after graduation, but I never could have predicted such a harsh line in the sand. The call comes when I’m in my navy cap and gown, queued up alphabetically with the rest of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences majors waiting to file into the auditorium. Danielle’s name flashes on my phone, and as I step out of line to answer it, my stomach churns with excited, anxious nausea.

Life rarely hands you such an obvious life-altering before-and-after moment, but as I answer Danielle’s call with sweaty palms and a medically concerning heartbeat, I know that this is the biggest moment of my life thus far. I’m ten minutes from my college graduation, but fifty years from now, when I think about today, this is the moment I’ll remember.

Our call is quick, and when I retake my place with the rest of the graduates, no one around me knows about the tectonic shift that has taken place under my feet. My book sold at an auction between eight publishing houses. The amount of money makes my head spin, second only to the emotional vertigo that swallows me whole when I realize there will be a book, with my name on it, on a bookshelf.

I can’t believe it.

The guy in front of me turns around with a scowl, and I realize I must have uttered that out loud. “What?” he asks.

I shake my head, trying to bring myself back to reality. “I can’t believe we’re graduating,” I say, because this random man will not be the first person to know that I achieved the goal I’ve worked toward for as long as I can remember.

“What’s your major?” he asks, and I can’t help but laugh. Hopefully this is the last time in my life I’ll have to answer that question.

“Creative writing.”

He chuckles a bit too much for someone also graduating with a liberal arts degree. “What are you going to do now? Write the next great American novel?” His casual condescension would bug the shit out of me on any other day.

“Something like that.” The ceremony starts in ten minutes, but I risk slipping away again. I text West to meet me, and a minute later, I crash into his arms outside the doors of Centennial Hall.

“What’s going on?” He grabs my shoulders and holds me at arm’s length, his eyes roving over my face.

“My book sold. I’m going to be a published author.”

His face splits into a grin. He wraps his arms around me and spins me until my feet are off the ground. When he sets me down, his eyes are shining with tears. “I’m so fucking proud of you, Jupiter.”

“I couldn’t have done it without you.”

He shakes his head. “This was all you.” He bends for a kiss. “The graduates are going in. You don’t want to miss it.”

“I don’t really care, to be honest.”

“You’re not skipping graduation.”

“C’mon, West. I just got hired at my dream job! Why do I need to walk?”

“Because your parents are inside waiting to cheer as you cross that stage. We’ll celebrate after, I promise.” We kiss again, and he squeezes my hand as we enter through the glass doors and separate: I join the graduates, and he sits with my parents in the auditorium.

I don’t absorb a single word of my graduation ceremony, but it doesn’t matter.

I did it.

I can finally stop running.

* * *

My parents take me to a late lunch after the ceremony, and they’ve settled into a lecture on the cost of living in New York when I tell them the good news. As soon as I get my first check, I’ll not only be able to afford my half of rent, I’ll also be able to pay back their tuition money.

I’ve never seen my mom speechless. It’s so satisfying.

They have a million questions. Am I sure it’s not a scam? Yes. Do I have a backup plan if the book doesn’t do well? No, but thanks for the vote of confidence. Do I plan to branch out from YA and write a “real book” next?

I don’t dignify that with a response, but I do order an extra-strong drink.

After lunch, my parents come to the house and help me pack everything I own. Amber is keeping all the furniture, so it’s just a matter of throwing clothes and shoes and books into boxes and drinking old margarita mix from the fridge in order to tolerate my parents.

By the time they’re on the road to San Diego, the sun is setting, I’m weary from their passive-aggressive remarks, and I’m itching to get out of the house. I don’t know why I expected them to have a better reaction to my book deal, but their surprised and skeptical faces when I broke the news kind of crushed me. All I want to do now is celebrate with West. I text him to meet me at the house and then change into a white off-the-shoulder dress that I’ve been saving for a special occasion. I’m sitting cross-legged on the bathroom counter, touching up my curls, when I hear a knock on the front door.

“Come in!” I shout, and a few seconds later, West’s face appears in the mirror.

“Whoa,” he says, his eyes traveling over the stack of boxes pushed into the corner of my room.

“Weird, right? How’d packing go at your place?”

“I don’t have much stuff.”

“I mean, same, if you don’t count the books. My parents took four boxes home with them.” I release the last curl, run my fingers through my hair, and spritz everything with hair spray. “Sorry my parents stayed forever, but you could have come over sooner.”

He leans against the doorjamb with his arms crossed and watches me reapply my makeup in the mirror. “You don’t get to spend much time with them.”

“Thankfully. I only need five more minutes and then I’ll be ready. What should we do? Dinner to celebrate? Can you believe we’re finally leaving?”

“Dinner sounds good.” He stuffs his hands in his pockets as I attempt winged eyeliner with my nose two inches from the mirror.

“And then Rishi is having a grad party, if you want to go?” My hand slips, and my right eye wings out way too far. I run a Q-tip under the tap and fix it.

“Eh,” West replies. “I didn’t graduate. Might be weird.”

“What? No. These are your friends, too. I’m on the fence. It’d be fun to say goodbye to everyone, but we’ll probably get on the road faster if I’m not majorly hungover in the morning. Did we decide if we’re leaving tomorrow or the next day? We get the keys to our apartment on Wednesday, so it just depends on how we want to split up the driving, where we want to stop for the night.” I swipe on a matte red lipstick and lean back to survey my face. The eyeliner is still uneven, but whatever. I’m going to be a published author! Who cares what my makeup looks like?

I knock over an open bottle of foundation as I’m climbing off the counter, and I meet West’s wary expression in the mirror. “Oops.” I quickly wipe it up with cotton balls. The counter is covered in makeup and hair stuff, and West looks thoroughly unimpressed. “I’ll be cleaner when we share a bathroom.” West is cleaner than I am—this has always been obvious by the state of our bedrooms—and I don’t want to get off on the wrong foot when we move in together.

He steps out of the way to let me pass. In my empty room, I slip on a pair of comfy sandals. “When we live together, I’ll be different. I’ll do my dishes and take out trash and whatever else clean people do—” The corners of West’s mouth are turned down, his brow furrowed. “What’s wrong?”

He swallows heavily. A prickling sense of foreboding settles over me as I watch his throat work. I step toward him, faltering when his body tenses.

“I can’t go to New York.”

“Tomorrow? That’s okay. We can leave Sunday.”

“No, Mars.” His voice is rough enough to bruise. “I’m not moving to New York.”

I blink, convinced I heard him wrong. “That’s not funny, West.”

He presses his lips together, waiting for something. For me to understand what’s happening, maybe? I glance at the open door over his shoulder, looking for—I don’t know what. Someone to tell me why he’s saying this. But the hall is empty, and it’s just him and me, and he’s looking at me with puppy dog eyes that are begging me not to hate him.

Panic builds in my throat until I’m halfway to asphyxiation. “What are you talking about? We found a place. You’re my roommate.” Yes, that’s good. Focus on that. Losing a roommate is a lot fucking easier than losing the love of my life.

He stares at the floor. “You won’t have trouble making rent.”

My breath is tight in my chest. Oh my god. He’s jealous. “Is this about my book deal?”

“No,” he says with blistering force. “I shouldn’t have said that. I didn’t mean it. This has nothing to do with you.”

“Then I can’t wait to hear the reason.”

“My family needs me. My grandma is getting worse by the day. My mom can’t take care of her and all the kids.”

“You’re moving back home?”

“Maybe.” He sighs heavily. “I don’t know yet.”

If this were entirely about his family, we would have talked about it before now. There’s something else going on; his words don’t match the tragic look in his eyes. “Is this about Bethany?”

“No.” He steps toward me, but I duck around him and out of my room, mind reeling.

I need fresh air. I need to not be here anymore. I need to know what the hell is going on.

I turn, and West is right behind me. “Are we breaking up?”

His head rears back in surprise. “If—if that’s what you want.”

“I want to move to New York with my boyfriend, but I guess that’s not an option. So it looks like you’re calling the shots. What do you want?”

His face falls. “I don’t think long distance ever works.” There’s a jagged edge to his voice that triggers something deep inside me.

I straighten. “Got it. Okay. You can leave,” I say woodenly. For the first time in my life, I’m too furious to cry.

“Mars,” he says, and then thinks better of it. “Jupiter.” It’s a bolt of pain straight through the heart. He grimaces as he rubs the back of his neck. “I thought we could still go out for your last night here.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“This isn’t happening the way I wanted it to.”

“Same.” My voice cracks.

He swallows heavily, his eyes lingering on my face for long enough that my chest shudders. He grips the countertop, his knuckles turning white, and he looks like he’s restraining himself. It’s chemical, this thing between us, and even when he’s breaking my heart, I want to let him step closer to me and drag his mouth over my skin. “This is the most exciting day of your life, and you deserve to celebrate.”

“You’re right,” I say. His expression turns hopeful. “And I will. Without you.”

His shoulders fall, but he leaves without argument, and it’s salt in the wound. He didn’t even fight for one last night.

I walk nearly a mile to Rishi’s in the dark; by the time I get to his house, I’m stone-cold sober in a way that requires immediate attention, because if I think about how West just torpedoed our future in five minutes, I don’t know what I’ll do. I let myself in the front door, and I’m early—the party is a dozen people sitting around a coffee table debating the ending of Breaking Bad over empty take-out containers. In normal circumstances I’d join the debate, but right now, I need a different energy.

“You didn’t need to wait for me to have fun,” I announce, one hand on my hip as I survey the room, looking for the nearest bottle. Rishi, Improv Connor, and a combination of English lit nerds and engineering nerds say hi, and when they ask where West is, I tip back a shot instead of answering.

“Couldn’t make it” is all I say, and I see Connor and Rishi raise their eyebrows at each other across the room. Whatever. Let them speculate. After twenty minutes and two more shots, I force the antihero conversation to a close and convince everyone that it would be the best idea in the world to turn the lights down and the music up. By the time Connor turns to me, I’m past the point of being pleasantly tipsy and have careened straight into drunk.

“Hey!” He tips his mouth closer to my ear so I can hear him over the music. “Are you okay?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You seem different.”

I giggle even though it’s not funny. “That’s because I am. Can I tell you a secret?” I ask, and when Connor nods, I crook my finger, and he leans over the arm of the couch until our faces are close. The strap of my dress slips down my shoulder, and I see Connor’s eyes tracing the fabric. “Today, my wildest dream came true.”

“What’s that?” he asks, and I realize I don’t want Improv Connor to be the fourth person in my life to know about my book deal.

“I actually can’t say. Top secret.” I mime zipping my lips.

Connor pouts, so I boop him on the nose with my fingertip and am drunk enough that I don’t care how weird that is. “Lucky you, though. You’re the only one in this room who knows that today is the happiest day of my life.” Maybe if I say the words out loud, it will make them true.

“You don’t seem that happy,” Connor says. When I don’t respond, he goes in for the kill. “Why are you here alone?”

I shrug again and then leave to refill our drinks before the ghost of West ruins the mood. When I return, Connor’s arms snake around me and pull me into his lap, sloshing vodka soda across my thighs. He swipes his bare hands over my skin, and I relax back into his chest and let him. And when he leans in for a kiss, I’m so fucking miserable having the best day of my life that I kiss him back.

* * *

I know something’s wrong before I open my eyes. And then Connor’s toenail scratches my calf under the sheet, and my stomach churns. Not something, but everything.

I jump out of bed and knock over a glass of water that is sitting on the floor as I grab my dress with shaking hands.

“Mars?” Connor squints at me, his red hair sticking out in all directions.

“I have to go.” I need to get out of this room and this house and as far away from this mistake as I can.

I search under dirty clothes and discarded blankets for my sandals and eventually find one under the bed.

“Do you want me to drive you home?”

“No!” I yelp, my voice tinged with hysteria. “I’ll walk.” I straighten my dress and bolt out of the room, one shoe in hand, the other left behind. Connor half-heartedly calls out for me to wait, but I let the front door slam behind me without another word. I wince as I sprint through the rocky front yard, sobbing giant tears as I rush home under a periwinkle sky.

I don’t have my house key or my cell phone, but Amber left the back door unlocked for me, so I let myself in and trudge through the quiet house. I catch a glimpse of myself in a mirror as I walk through the hall; mascara is smudged down my cheeks, my eyes are puffy and red, and my curls are flat and snarled at the same time. I drop my sandal and trudge to my room.

My eyes widen at the sight of West asleep in my bed.

I blink, shuffling through a mixture of shock and joy and devastation so quickly it leaves me nauseous. I sprint to the bathroom and puke into the toilet. Even when I’m sure there’s nothing left to come up, I stay hunched on the tile floor, unable to face what I’ve done. When soft fingers pull my hair out of my face and hold it behind my head, I want to die.

I slowly push myself up, turning to rest my back against the side of the tub. West lets my hair slip through his fingers and sits on the floor across from me, his arms resting on his knees.

He takes a deep breath, and I wince in anticipation of his anger. “I’m sorry,” he says, like they’re the only two words in the world. “I never wanted to break up with you.”

“West—” My voice cracks on his name. I never thought it’d be painful to say, but I never thought we’d end up here.

He holds his hands up to stop me. “Let me get through this. I can’t follow you to New York. Not until—” He rakes a hand through his hair. It’s as long as I’ve ever seen it. It’s the best he’s ever looked. “I have some stuff I need to get sorted first. But we can make this work, Mars.” He scooches closer until our knees are touching. He puts his hands on my thighs, and I want them to stay there forever. “I need you. I don’t know who I am without you. I’ve never loved anything or anyone the way I love you.”

“I had sex with Connor last night.” I wipe tears off my cheeks, but it doesn’t stop them from coming. I wrap my arms around my knees and squeeze to keep myself from splintering apart, shocked at how this has become my reality, when twelve hours ago, West and I were about to start our lives together. His hands drop away from my thighs.

A coil of dread tightens in my chest, binding my lungs until I can’t breathe. “I’m so sorry and I love you, too. It meant nothing, less than nothing. I hate that I did it. I feel sick. I never would have done it if you hadn’t—if we hadn’t—I was drunk, West,” I say desperately.

The light in his eyes flickers out, a torch snuffed. In that moment, I become a stranger to him.

“That was always my dad’s excuse, too.”

My stomach pitches. A fresh wave of nausea hits. “I’ll stop drinking. I’ll never do it again.”

He pushes himself to his feet and walks out of the bathroom. I follow after him, crying and pleading and making promises as he walks out of my house and my life without another word.

One hour later, with all my shit thrown in the trunk of my car, I leave Tucson.