life who never made her feel like she had to be fake.
She followed him out into the parking lot, teetering a bit on her stupid heels. It was cooler than last night, the brackish breeze wafting in off the river. Her hair was coming loose from its bun. “I don’t know why you’re being like this,” she said.
Colby leaned against the railing of a wheelchair ramp, like it was taking all his energy just to hold himself upright, and shook his head. “Forget it.”
“No,” Meg insisted, “tell me. I thought everything was going great until this morning. Like, are you sorry we had—” She broke off. “I mean, is that what it is?”
“No!” Just for a second, Colby looked horrified. “Jesus Christ, Meg, of course not.”
“Then what?” she asked, relieved in spite of herself; still, it came out a lot more like begging than she meant for it to. “I don’t get it. We were supposed to have this totally fun weekend, my friends really liked you last night, you’ve got this great new job—”
“I don’t, actually.”
That stopped her. “What?” she asked, not understanding. “Why not?”
Colby shook his head again, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Because I fucked it up, okay? Does it matter how?”
“I mean, to me it does.” Meg gazed at him, baffled. “I don’t get how—”
“It’s done, okay? That’s all that matters. And I already texted Moira and told her I was leaving the warehouse, so—”
“But how can it just be done?” Meg couldn’t help pressing. It seemed like an infinitely fixable problem to her, the kind of thing that could be solved with a carefully worded email or call. “I’m sure if you just call that guy back and ask—”
“Can you stop it?” Colby exploded. The anger in his eyes, in his body, seemed endless; it reminded her of the middle of the ocean. It reminded her of staring up into space. “I know you think everyone who doesn’t agree with your way of handling a situation at any given moment is a dumbass who just hasn’t thought the big thoughts like you have, but you might be surprised to learn that’s not actually how it works.”
“That’s not what I think,” Meg interrupted, even as she was dimly aware that it kind of had been; God, she didn’t know which one of them annoyed her more. She hated this, standing out here fighting where anyone could see them. It was exactly what she’d spent the last year and a half trying to avoid. And he knew that! He knew that, and still . . . “You’re being so enormously unfair right now. Like, what exactly is your problem with me all of a sudden?”
“My problem is you are so completely divorced from reality—”
“How am I the one divorced from reality?”
“You can’t even tell your best fucking friend you don’t want to go to Cornell!” he bellowed, throwing his arms out like he was daring the sky to open above him, and that was the moment Emily came through the front door of the restaurant.
“Wait, what?” Emily’s eyes narrowed, her gaze darting back and forth between them. “Um. Meg? What’s he talking about?”
“Nothing,” Meg said, eyes blurring with tears as she kept her gaze trained on Colby; he’d dropped his arms now, a boxer with no one to fight. “I’ll see you inside in a minute, okay?”
“Meg—”
“Everything’s fine, Em. Really.”
“I just—” Emily broke off. “Okay.”
Once they were alone, Meg stared at him another minute. “Um,” she said, and it came out like a whisper, “I think you should probably go.”
Colby nodded once, just faintly, glancing around the parking lot like he was surveying for physical damage. Meg understood the impulse. It seemed like there should be broken glass around him, dishes smashed on the concrete. It seemed like it ought to be the end of the world.
“Yeah,” he said. “I guess I should.”
Thirty-One
Colby
Colby did a quick mental inventory of everything he’d left at Meg’s house, decided it was nothing he couldn’t live without, then got in his car and headed straight for the highway, turning up the radio as loud as it would go. He wanted to forget her smile. He wanted to forget that he’d come here at all. Most of all, he wanted to forget the way she’d looked at him: like he was so fucking disappointing, like everything she’d worried was true about him actually was.
So? he thought, the city disappearing in the rearview. Let her be disappointed, then.