upsetting enough, because I’m trying to move on, but he placed an order for ten thousand dollars’ worth of product from my parents. That’s just cruel. They desperately need money but they can’t take it from him.”
“I’m so sorry.” She sounds appalled. “You’re right. I’ll talk to him.”
“Please do.”
I wish I could talk to him. I wish I could see him, touch his face, kiss him, send him a snarky text and wait for his smart-aleck answer…
“Also, the billboard on Times Square? He needs to take that thing the heck down.”
“Got it.” She sighs. “There’s just something you need to understand about him, though. He’s trying to apologize the only way he knows how. Spending money is his love language.”
“His what now?”
“That’s how he communicates affection. We didn’t have the healthiest model for relationships growing up, but he’s always tried to care for you the only way he knows how. Remember how he was always feeding you? He does the same thing with me and Tamara. It’s because he remembers being hungry as a teenager, and he never wants anyone he cares about to go through that. And when we were kids, the only affection that we got from our parents was in the form of material goods. Dad drowned us in presents. He always sent our mom jewelry and giant vases of flowers when she was mad at him, which was most of the time. Blake’s trying to learn how to live outside of Dad’s shadow, but it doesn’t happen overnight.”
My heart clenches in my chest. The thought of Blake going hungry crushes me every time. It makes me want to invent a time machine just so I could travel back through the years and show up at his house with bags and bags of home-cooked meals, brimming with all the love he’d been denied.
No. No. He hurt my parents. I have to keep remembering that. If we keep talking, I’ll weaken.
“Take care of yourself, Alice. Give Steve and Tamara my love.” And I hang up quickly and turn off the phone.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Blake
“We told you so.” Nico’s words ring in my ears. He’s reminded me by email, text, and phone that I should have run the billboard idea by him and Renata.
Alice joined in on the chorus of blame, which was super helpful. The press quickly figured out who the Times Square billboard was referring to, and now there’s a troop of newspaper reporters camped out in Peach Pit, embarrassing Winona’s family. I’m taking my life in my hands by showing up here.
But what kind of life do I have without her? A lonely one, where I wake up every morning in a cold, empty bed, missing the feel and smell of her.
I stifle a yawn, clutching the cardboard box on my lap as the limo driver slows to a stop in front of Winona’s house. I’m exhausted. Weeks without sleep will do that to you.
The cardboard box contains a gift that I’ve brought for her, inspired by Alice’s rant to stop throwing money at the problem and start thinking with my heart instead of my wallet. It’s the most thoughtful, personal gift I could come up with, and financially, it’s worth nothing at all.
“This is it!” I call out to the limo driver.
Winona’s family home is a small white bungalow with a traditional front porch, ringed in by a white picket fence. The front yard is adorned with buckets of flowers sitting in a wooden wagon. The back yard, their orchard, stretches into the distance. I recognize it from my internet stalking sessions.
The driver slows to a halt, and I fling the door open. A blast of sauna-wet air smacks me in the face and sucks the breath from my lungs.
“I’ve got my suitcase, thanks.”
I slide out of the car with the box under my arm, set my suitcase down on the street, and hand him a stack of bills. He nods his thanks.
“Hey, you!” an angry voice screeches at me. I turn to see an old woman with white hair piled in a top-knot, slowly making her way towards me from across the street, leaning on a cane.
“Are you one of those reporters?” she demands when she reaches me. She looks after the departing limo, headed back to the airport.
“No, I’m just the idiot who sent them here and who’s trying to fix my mistake,” I say.
She thwaps me on the leg with the cane, hard, and the cane slips from her fingers and drops onto the