“It sounds like a French movie. One I’d actually want to watch.”

“Well, it wasn’t like that at all. It was more like an indie horror film.”

“Did Russell show you his tattoo?!”

Marnie is entirely too obsessed with this, and I really shouldn’t have told her, but who else can I talk to about it, and also we’re out for a morning jog and she said we could stop for gelato if I tell her what I so clearly didn’t want to tell her about the weekend getaway.

“Of course not.”

“Oh my God, we have to listen to every Amy Winehouse song and figure out what line it is.”

“Marn. Promise me you won’t tell anyone at school about any of this.”

“Please. Have you ever heard me gossip about anything with anyone other than you?”

“No. Oh my God it’s so humid. Can we take a break?”

“Yeah, one minute.”

We slow down to pace around and replenish fluids at an intersection.

“What does Sadie look like, though? Because now I’m picturing like, a young blonde Angelina Jolie.”

I love Marnie, but I glare at her.

“Sorry. I’m sure you’re way more beautiful.”

“She’s like the shark in Jaws. At first, she was just this scary unknown thing lurking beneath the surface, and now she’s bigger and scarier than I’d ever imagined.”

“Ugh. You’re gonna need a bigger boat.”

“Exactly.”

“Aww, honey, but you guys are in love. That’s the biggest boat there is.”

“I don’t know if he is.”

“You are.”

“I’m so in love with him,” I whisper, like I’m admitting defeat. “I’m a basketcase.”

I shake my head, and glance across the street, and suddenly I can’t breathe.

“What?” Marnie follows my gaze.

I bolt over behind the entrance to the store on our corner, already drowning in adrenaline and cortisol. I wave Marnie over, in a panic.

“What is happening?”

Vince is unlocking the door to an empty restaurant space across the street, and Sadie is standing next to him. I can’t speak.

“Oh fuck—is that Vince? Oh shit—is that Jaws?”

I cover my mouth. I may throw up. I peek around and see Vince go into the restaurant. Sadie follows him.

Marnie steps out, hand on her hips, and stares across the street. “Honey, honey. Come on. This doesn’t mean anything. She probably just showed up and he can’t get rid of her.”

“Can you see them?”

“No. The door’s closed and the windows are papered-over most of the way. This is dumb. You’re getting all worked-up and it’s probably nothing. Let’s go over there.”

“I can’t move. I can’t breathe.”

“Honey.” She comes over to rub my back. “Come on. In. Out. In. Out. Good girl. You got it. Sweetie, I hate to see you like this.”

“I knew this was going to happen.” I bend forward and rest my hands on my knees. “I knew it.”

“Okay, I’ll go look first.”

“Marnie, no!”

Too late.

She jogs across the street and slinks up between the front door and the window, peering inside through the glass of the door. When I see how quickly she jerks her head back, and the look on her face, I want to die. The feeling in my chest is unbearable. The only thing worse is the feeling in my stomach. She jogs back and grabs my arm. “Let’s go.”

“Just tell me.”

“It’s not what you think.”

“Marnie, just tell me.”

“Let’s just go over here, hold on.” When we get about a block away in the opposite direction, she pulls me around the corner and pulls no punches: “She was trying to kiss him, but he was resisting her. I promise you, he was resisting her and pushing her away. She was all over him, but he was pushing her away and that’s what matters. Look at me, honey. Look at me.”

I somehow manage to raise my eyes to her concerned face. It’s the same face she has when one of her kids or students has fallen down. She’s not denying that it might hurt, but she doesn’t want to make it worse by freaking out.

“It’s okay,” she says. “I would tell you if I thought it looked like he was into it and he was not. Definitely not. I’m sure he will tell you about it later and you’ll laugh about what a little drama queen you were about nothing.”

I try to concentrate on Marnie’s face. I do trust her. I don’t trust Sadie. I don’t know if I trust Vince, and that’s what’s killing me. She wraps her arms around me when I collapse into her, sobbing. I don’t care who sees. It’s too much.

I told Vince that I was too tired to do anything last night, which was certainly true, but I was mostly exhausted from crying so much.

I got no sleep.

I’ve agreed to meet him for lunch at the Italian restaurant where I gave him the Rumi book. I didn’t want him to come to my apartment. There are too many places he could kiss me there and make me lose my resolve.

I can control a room full of six year-olds, it should be so much easier for me to control my own brain. Not since I first laid eyes on Vince Devlin.

These eyes, my eyes, have puffy grey bags under them today. There isn’t enough cover-up in the world to hide them, or enough lip gloss to detract from them. All I can do is wear my sunglasses and hope that I don’t burst into tears as soon as I see him while shooting snot out of my nose.

I get to the restaurant five minutes earlier than our agreed-upon time, so I can get settled and calm myself down.

Un, deux, trois, fuck.

He got here before me. The hostess points me towards him, sitting at a corner table on the patio. He looks nervous. Nervous and beautiful and completely capable of breaking my heart with one look.

He sees me and smiles, stands up. I let him kiss my cheek and hold out my chair for me. When I sit down, a small sad sigh escapes my lips.

“Hey you,” he says. “I missed you yesterday.”

I don’t remove my sunglasses, because I’m already tearing up. I nod. “I missed you too.” The words come out soft and gravelly.

“Are you getting a cold?”

“Maybe.”

“You should get their minestrone soup.” He looks so worried about me. It’s too sweet. He rubs his lips together. I have this feeling he needs to tell me something, and I just want him to get it over with.

“I just saw my Dad, he said that Charlie wants me to tell you that book was a big hit with his girlfriend.”

“She’s not his girlfriend,” I whisper.

“She will be soon enough. He’s a Devlin.” He grins.

I shift around in my chair.

“You gonna take your sunglasses off?”

“Not yet.”

“Are you okay?”

I take a breath. “How’ve you been? How was your day yesterday?”

“Weird.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I had so many calls about a property that I just listed, more than I was expecting.”

“Oh yeah? Did you…have showings? At the property?”

“Yeah. What’d you get up to? I missed you. I told you that.”

Our waitress comes to take our order, but I haven’t looked at the menu yet. He orders me a minestrone soup and hot tea. He’s being so sweet I might start screaming. When the waitress leaves, he reaches across the table to pull my sunglasses off my face.

“Whoah.” He stares at my pink, swollen, damp eyes.

I can’t look at him anymore.

“Shit,” he says, under his breath. “What is it?”

“Umm…” I sniffle and wipe away a tear. There’s no one seated immediately around us, and no reason to put off this conversation. I stare at the center of the table as I speak. “I’ve been thinking…We should have a little time-out. Take a break. I just need to be on my own for a little bit to sort through my feelings, and I don’t want to speak for you, but maybe you could do the same.”

“Why would we do that?”

“It’s not you, Vince, I promise. It’s just…hard to overcome the circumstances in which we met.”

“I don’t see why it matters how we met. You met your principal the normal boring way and look how that turned out.”

“I just think we should take a break before things get too serious.”

“Well then you are way too late.”

I finally glance up at him and the look he gives me breaks my heart in two, but it wasn’t the one I was expecting. He looks heartbroken.

“Why is this happening?”

“It was bound to happen eventually, you know that.”

“Why is this happening now?”

“I saw you yesterday morning. With Sadie.”

He doesn’t even blink. “Nothing happened. I mean, she was trying something, but I didn’t…You don’t trust me?”

“Were you going to tell me that you saw her?”

“No, Nina. That’s not what I was going to tell you today. I don’t give a fuck about Sadie—seeing her barely even registered in my brain—this can’t be about that.”

“Well I do give a fuck about Sadie and about Russell and about you, and I want to be able to only give a fuck about you and me, but I need some time on my own so I can process everything that’s happened.”

“You said you aren’t mad at him anymore.”

“I’m not but I never had time to process the breakup either. I was with him for three years, Vince, I was engaged to him.”

Our of the corner of my eye, I see the waitress heading towards us with my soup and tea, but as soon as she catches our body language, she turns on her heels, pretending to have forgotten something, and goes back inside.

“Are you telling me you still have feelings for him? Is that why you’re worried about me and Sadie— you’re projecting?”

“I don’t have that kind of feelings for him no. God no. Vince. I’m a mess right now. School starts in less than three weeks and I can’t be an emotional mess when I’m responsible for dozens of small children. Why don’t you understand this?”

“You said you’d give me the whole summer.” It’s an accusation, the way he says it. He’s getting aggressive and I’m getting defensive. I honestly didn’t expect him to be like this. He’s usually so open and understanding. I don’t know what I was thinking.

“I know. I’m sorry. I’m not good at this.”

“At what? Being with me?”

“I love being with you. I just don’t know if I’m good at being me when I’m with you.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean? Who are you being?”

“Vince.”

“No, tell me. I wanna know. Who were you being? Who did I fall in love with?”

He says it so quickly, my brain doesn’t even register the words. “I’ve booked a flight, I’m going to Bloomington for ten days.”

“What? When?”

“Tomorrow. I’m going to stay with my parents.”

“You already planned this. Without telling me.”

“I just decided to yesterday. I’m telling you now.”

He shakes his head. I can visibly see him shutting down.

“Vince. I didn’t mean for this to be a permanent break. I just need some space. It’s not your fault, but I’m overwhelmed. I don’t know what else to do.”

I’ve lost him. I can see it in his eyes. “What about Charlie?”

“Well…I can FaceTime with him when I’m gone.”

He shakes his head.

“Vince.”

He won’t even look at me. Whatever he’s thinking about, even though he’s physically still here, he’s already left me.

“We can still be friends while we’re working through this. I’m just talking about a couple of weeks.”

“No.” He looks up at me.

“No?”

“We had a deal.”

“I’m sorry if you perceive this as some sort of betrayal, but I was hoping you’d be a little more flexible and understanding.”

“Yeah? I was hoping a good girl like you would be a lot more reliable.”

“How am I not reliable? You’re the one with the history of lovin’ and leavin’ ‘em.”

“I don’t know what else I could ever say or do to show you that it was different with you. You get everything or you get nothing.”

“That doesn’t sound so different to me.”

He winces, but he’s not budging. He’s so stubborn. I never would have expected him to be this stubborn.

“That doesn’t seem unreasonable to you, Vince?”

“You know what—don’t talk to me like I’m a six year-old. Deciding to leave town for ten days before you even give me a chance to talk about this seems unreasonable to me. It’s pretty immature, too.” He stands up, pulls a twenty-dollar bill out of his wallet and drops it on the table. “You know what—forget about Charlie. My Dad’s started bringing Sharon around a lot. He’ll be fine.”

“What, so is there a one-woman limit in the Devlin household? What is that supposed to mean? God.”

I can see that he regrets saying that, but I’m so mad at him right now I don’t care.

“You’re leaving? That’s it?”

“The difference with you, Nina, so we’re clear, is that I wanted to give you everything. You’re the one who’s leaving. Deal with that.”

I don’t watch him walk away. I can’t. I already know that if I run after him it’s too late.