My future arrives on a Tuesday on a wooden pallet shipped from California, or so Jackson tells me. The text from him pings through as I’m putting together a vendor list for Honey, and when I see Jackson’s name on my phone, my heart seizes up.

Bottles are here. Want to pack together?

My answer is yes. But also, no.

I know Jackson’s offer is a white flag, but I’m not ready to accept it. If I see Jackson we’re just going to go back to the way things were during our fight: we’re going to talk or argue or kiss when we need to work and I’m not ready to go there yet, not with so much on the line.

My fingers tremble over the keypad of my phone. I’ve got it. I hate feeling like I’m tied to him in this business, and I wish for another desperate moment that my dad had actually stood up for me and that I could just hide out in the safety of the guesthouse until this launch. But the reality is, Jackson is part of everything now. I’d needed him and wanted him. Now I just have to deal with it.

Fine, comes his tense message. I’m still working tonight. You can use your key.

Thanks, I send back, but he doesn’t respond again.

I’m so caught up in the awkwardness of the moment that I almost forget how important his message is. My products. Are here. Something lightens in my chest, ever so slightly. This is real and after all these weeks of dreaming and planning, I’m making it happen. Penchant personal lubricant is an actual product. And in a few short hours I’ll get to hold it in my hands.

The future’s rushing at me and it feels like a breeze on my face. For the first time in three days, I smile. It’s only later, standing in front of Jackson’s empty apartment, that my smile drops.

I’m not ready, I’m not ready, I’m not ready. I need to start anyway. I fish the key to Jackson’s apartment out of the pocket of my shorts and take a deep breath before unlocking the door.

Here is the table, where I ate food I couldn’t taste because all I wanted was him. Here is the kitchen, where we had sex on the floor. And here is the desk, with Jackson’s traitorous computer. Each stupid, everyday object is important in the story of us, and a knife slides between my ribs.

I squeeze my eyes closed for a second, and when I open them I focus on the reason I’m here. A stack of cardboard shipping boxes sits in the middle of Jackson’s living room, piled nearly chest-high. My supplier sent them on a pallet but I don’t see one anywhere. Did Jackson or the delivery person have to hand-carry each box just to get them inside? I squirm. I should have been here to help. But I’m glad I wasn’t.

A note with my name on it sits on the coffee table, wedged between a stack of Hooligan’s coasters and a cardboard box. I scan the paper quickly and read Jackson’s scrawl, “Congratulations. Open the box.”

I use my fingernails to pry the packing tape off the cardboard box and lift out a hot pink box cutter with Penchant monogrammed on it. I laugh when I see the second note: “Don’t you wish you had this two minutes ago?” Yeah, Jackson, I do. Why do you still have to be so nice to me?

My laugh threatens to turn into a sob so I step around the coffee table and use my handy new box cutter to slice open a box of lube. I lift out a bottle of Penchant personal lubricant and my heart catches. The bottle is everything I’d hoped—streamlined and classy, with a satisfying weight in my hands. I run my thumb over the fig leaf logo and I can’t help but smile again, doing a little victory dance in the empty apartment.

I did this. We did. Me and Jackson or Delilah and Skippy, however you want to put it. I have a product to sell and a path to a job that I really, really want. This is my life now.

I fold one of the retail boxes and slip the bottle inside, then step back and snap a picture of it with my cell phone. One down, two thousand four hundred and ninety-nine bottles left to go. Guess I better get started.

An hour later, I have about one hundred bottles boxed up and a familiar panic creeps into my chest. I’m not going nearly fast enough. I don’t have twenty-five hours’ worth of time to sit in Jackson’s apartment and pack these up. I want this to be mine so much that I’m strangling it. I’m going to make this fail if I don’t ask for help.

I send a text to Abby, hoping she’s free. What are you doing right now?

Chilling with Nico, she answers. What’s up?

Any chance you want to come to Jackson’s house and pack lube with me? I’m glad she can’t see how close to tears I am.

With Nico? It’s almost bedtime for him.

Shoot. I love Nico, but she has a point. He’d probably cause more delays than anything, and it would feel weird to have Nico over at Jackson’s place. Jackson and I are barely talking right now. I don’t know that he’d appreciate a five-year-old bouncing around his things.

I do the only thing I can think of, picking up the phone to call my dad. “Can you watch Nico for me?” I ask once I get him on the line. “Or, for Abby? So she can help me?”

I swipe at renegade tear with the edge of my sleeve. He’s going to say no. He’s going to tell me I earned all this stress the second I decided to lie to him. And I do deserve it. I’ve let him down time and again—with school, with coming home, and now with this business that I can’t even handle on my own. I bite the inside of my cheek and taste blood.

“Slow down, kiddo. What’s wrong?” My dad uses his calmest voice when he responds, the one he used over and over with me after his divorce. The one he used on every bad day, for every scraped knee. A sob constricts my throat and the whole thing spills out of me—how I fought with Jackson and how I can’t count on him right now. How I need to get all of these bottles packed up in the next few days, thanks to Gayle’s deadline. How I have a party to plan and how I need everything ready before then. How I’m sitting alone in Jackson’s living room, freaking the fuck out.

“I wish I’d known how much you were struggling,” my dad says finally. Instead of making me feel ashamed, for the first time in a while with him, I feel seen. It’s not forgiveness, but it’s a start. “Of course I’ll help.” I hear the sound of car keys clinking. “Tell Abigail I’m on my way.”