“I’m sober. Fucked up, maybe. But sober.” Barely. The first twenty-four hours had been touch and go, but I’d locked myself away up here. “And I apologized to Jonas.”
“It’s not about that. You know you have an open invitation at both our houses. Pretty sure Kira has already stocked three cases of orange soda on the off chance you finally admit that you might need a little support.”
“I’m fine.” I was going to tattoo that shit on my forehead pretty soon.
“What happened to you and Zoe?”
“What did she tell you happened?” I rolled the bottle between my hands and told my chest to simmer down with the whole heartache shit.
“Is this high school?” Quinn shook her head. “I’m not carrying a note to fourth period.”
“Pretty sure everyone just texts now.” Except Zoe. No calls. No texts. No carrier pigeons or emails. My guitars had arrived at the penthouse two days after I left Colorado, along with a bag of things I’d left behind. Leave it to Shannon to keep picking up my shit after I was gone.
“She said what happened between you two was private.” Quinn lifted the bottle of water like she was looking through it.
“Did she?” My hands paused.
“She did.” Quinn put the water bottle down. “She also said I was right, and she should have gone for higher ground.”
My head whipped toward hers. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“My best guess is it means that she got too close, you couldn’t handle your feelings, and then you hit the self-destruct button.” She lifted a brow. “How close am I?”
I looked away.
“That’s what I thought.”
“She thinks she needs to fix me.” I started rolling the bottle again. “I told her to choose between loving me just like I was and fixing me. She chose to fix me, because that’s what she does. Something isn’t perfect? Zoe to the rescue. Someone doesn’t work? Zoe’s on it. She’d rather know she accomplished her mission than stick it out with a mess she can’t manage.”
“No way. If someone walked away, it was you. That woman loves you.”
“She only thinks she does,” I argued.
“Right, because you’re an expert on the way women think? What she thinks?”
“I know enough about women—”
“In bed!” Quinn snapped.
“I’ve never taken you to bed, and I know you pretty damn well.”
“Thank God for that,” she muttered, then sighed. “What did she say exactly?”
“Do we have to do this?” I shoved away from the table and walked to the railing, turning to lean against it the same way I had every morning when Zoe had taken her coffee out here.
“Yes, we do! You broke that woman, Nix, and from what I see, you’re just as shattered. So yeah, we have to do this. What did she say?” She folded her arms across her chest.
“Fine. She said if the choice was between her loving me, or her stepping aside so I could be healthy enough to love someone, she’d choose that. She’d choose to fix me, rather than love me.”
Quinn’s face slackened. “She really said that.”
“Yeah. She tells me she loves me and then less than twenty-four hours later, she’s dropping that shit.”
“Restating that she loves you?” Quinn’s eyes narrowed. “Is that what you mean by dropping that shit?”
I bristled. “She’d rather fix me than take me as I am.”
“Well, let’s ignore for a second that you’re pretty messed up, shall we?” She stood. “Listen to what she said. She loves you so much that she’s willing to break her own heart, if that means you’ll be able to experience love, even if that means she’s not the one you love. That’s some pretty heavy self-sacrifice.”
“That’s not…” I ran my hands over my hair and tried to find the words. “Who the hell does that? I wouldn’t trade her love so she could go love someone else.” Screw that.
“Isn’t that what you’re doing?”
I sagged against the railing. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“At least we can agree on that.”
“What if there’s no fixing me? What if this is just the way I am?”
“You still going to therapy?”
“Every Thursday like clockwork,” I replied, cringing at the sight of Wannabe Shannon’s silhouette crossing the far window. Fuck, I missed Zoe. I missed her smile, and her laugh. I missed her sense of humor and wit. I missed her kisses, and her body, and the smell of her shampoo.
“How is that possible without your phone to keep you on that clockwork?” Quinn challenged.