THE BLINDS ARE OPEN. I know this without opening my eyes. I’m hesitant to do that because I can already feel that they’re swollen. My back aches from sleeping on the sofa in a wine-induced decision.

How much wine did I even drink?

My stomach sloshes and my head pounds in what can only be a red wine staccato. It’s enough to be labeled as a verifiable hangover, one reason why I never drink too much. I hate this. Yet, it’s nothing, not a scrape, against the pain in my heart.

Forcing a swallow to hopefully somehow make the tickle in the back of my throat go away, the tickle that comes right before the burn between your eyes that lets you know the tear maker is firing up. That one little movement, the bobbing of my throat, sets off a riot inside me and suddenly I’m alive and feeling every ounce of horror I expected and then some.

As if someone set a weight on my lungs, I can’t breathe. Struggling to sit upright and not puke or press the headache into a full fledged migraine, I battle to drag air into my body. It shouldn’t be a problem. I feel hollow.

“Damn it,” I cry, battling the agony that is swelling up and overwhelming me. I touch my eyes. They’re swollen and so are my lips. This is an ugly cry. This is what it feels like to lose, what I’m sure, is the love of my life so he can have his.

Still dressed in the clothes from the night before, the wine still heavy on my tongue because I apparently didn’t brush my teeth, I sit on my sofa and watch the sun come up through the bay window. There’s no beauty in it. The colors are lifeless, dull. Peace doesn’t come with the new day either and I wonder how long it will take to not wake up and think about him.

The clock tells me it’s too early to find Pepper and I’d feel like a jerk if I woke up Macie. It’s just me. Alone. And damn it if it doesn’t feel unbearable.

I miss his arms around me and the way he tugged me closer to him. The way his eyes looked when he woke up and his sleepy, sweet smile. The smell of him. The feel of his breath on my cheek. The way his laugh made me feel like the world was splashed with a rainbow.

The tears come, dripping off my chin. With each drop comes a new flurry of despair and I feel myself starting to fall off a cliff. My phone is on the table in front of me and I pick it up and call Macie.

It rings five times and I’m ready to hit “end call” when it picks up.

“Hello?” The voice is sleepy, rough, and very much not Macie.

“Will?”

“There better not be another guy answering this phone,” he says, a little more awake now.

I wipe the snot off my face. “I’m sorry,” my voice cracks and I mentally berate myself for behaving this way.

“Hey, who is this?” Sheets rustle in the background. “Danielle?”

“Yes,” I whisper.

“What’s wrong?”

“I need to talk to Macie.”

“Are you okay? I mean, I’m up looking for her now, but you’re gonna have to tell me you’re all right.”

“I’m fine,” I sniffle. “No, I’m not Will. My heart is so broken.”

I don’t know why I’m telling him of all people this, a man I only talk to when he answers her phone or if he butts into a conversation we have while they’re together. Still, he’s the only one around to listen.

“I’m sorry. He’s an idiot, fact as fuck.”

“You don’t even know him.”

“I don’t have to know him. I know you.”

“No, you don’t,” I laugh through the tears as I hear him telling Macie I’m on the phone.

“Macie knows you and loves you. Therefore, you’re family. Whether you’re right or wrong, he’s an idiot. That’s how this works over here.”

“Thanks, Will.”

“You need to get away, you’re welcome here. Our door is open. Well, proverbially. I’d stay away from the bedroom one unless you—”

“Give me the phone, you fucker!” Macie says. I hear the phone go between them. I can’t help but laugh. They always make me laugh. Their relationship is not perfect by any means—Macie wants to kill him half the time. But she loves him. Respects him. And he wants to be with her over anything else. I cry harder.

“You okay?” she asks as I hear a door shut in the background.

“No,” I sob. “Why did I do this to myself ?”

“Oh my God. What happened?”

I go through everything with her, listening to her gasp when I tell her where he was traded.

“To your father? He’s going to play for San Diego?”

“Yes,” I breathe, heading into the kitchen or a cold towel. “I can’t go with him.”

“No, you can’t.”

Wrapping a few ice cubes in a dish cloth, I return to the sofa and put it on my eyes. “Macie, I knew better than any of this. I knew I couldn’t resist him and I knew I’d be in this exact position sooner or later.”

“I know, I know. But you followed your heart.”

“Fuck my heart.”

She laughs, but it’s not at me. “So that’s it between you?”

“Doesn’t it have to be?” The ice clinks in the cloth. “I don’t want to be my mother and I can’t be near them. They destroy me. It’s just . . . not healthy. Even my therapist suggested I break off all contact. That’s why I use my mom’s maiden name of Ashley and not Kipling. To distance myself. They’re so toxic to me and I can’t imagine what they’d do if they knew Lincoln was involved with me.”

“I really don’t know what to say. This breaks my heart.”

“Your heart? I don’t think I have one anymore. It’s completely shattered,” I whisper. “I lost Lincoln not just to baseball, but to my father.”

We sit in silence, her looking for words to make me feel better and me trying to figure out if I could drink enough wine to pass back out without puking. There has to be a ratio. I would know it if I’d lived a little more wildly.

“I don’t even hate him,” I say finally, breaking the quiet. “I can’t, and trust me, I want to. He’s leaving me, choosing to be traded. But this is just how he’s built. This was inevitable and he’s right—this is the choice he has to make for his life. I can’t fault him for that.”

“You’re a bigger person than me,” she laughs.

I sigh. “I just sit here and think, ‘How am I supposed to just go on?’ How do you move on from something like this when everything reminds me of him? I feel like I’m going to be stuck walking by that damn elevator every day, coming home to an empty house, having a phone that doesn’t get a selfie of his abs at least once daily,” I laugh through the sadness. “It’s going to be purgatory.”

“Come here.”

“What?”

“Julia said she’d hire you. She needs help. Her foundation is picking up and she needs a hand she can trust. These people, the Gentry’s, are huge on loyalty, Danielle.”

Her idea sounds better than I’d like it to. Moving across the country, or half of it, isn’t something you just pick up and do. But the other option of living in a post-Landry world doesn’t seem like something I can just do either.

“I’m being serious,” Macie insists. “Money isn’t really a thing for you. Just pick up and come and rent something until you find what you want to do. Think about it. We can shop and go to movies and concerts and . . .” The phone muffles as I hear her say, “Stop that, Will. Just give me a few minutes. Oh, my God. Don’t stop that though.”

Rolling my eyes, but laughing too, I get the picture. “I’ll think about it, but right now you need to go apparently.”

She sucks in a breath. “Think about it and call me later.”

I look around the living room and make a decision. “I don’t have to call you later. I’ll be there in two weeks.”