“I love you,” I tell him in a hurry. “We’ll play again soon. Go to school tomorrow.”

I sign off before he can say another word, and then I press my fingers against my stinging eyes.

I miss Mike. I miss his banter and his smile and his humor and his voice. I miss making him laugh over the phone. I miss him wishing me sweet dreams just before I fall asleep.

I crawl under my bedcovers, wondering how long it’s going to take for me to stop feeling this way. If I developed this crush on him in just two and a half weeks, it should only take that long to get rid of it, right? I’m already four days in, so I should only have two weeks left. Just two weeks. That’s not that long . . .

Only, Mike is leaving on tour in eleven days, and he’ll be gone for six weeks. So even if it only takes me two weeks to get over him, I won’t see him again for two months. And I promised myself—no more phone calls, no more private chats. So it will be at least two months until group get-togethers, two months until I can try to be Mike’s friend again . . .

My phone dings with a text, and my screen lights up my dark room as I read it.

Sweet dreams, Hailey.

I close my eyes, imagining Mike thinking of me in this moment, and it reopens the hole in my chest.

Does he know I’m avoiding him? He must. Did he see my name on his screen before I logged off? If he did, I hope my brother told him I have a stomachache. I hope Mike believed him . . .

It feels like my heart is starving, and I don’t know how to fix that, but it warns me that I’m wrong: two weeks isn’t going to be enough.

Not enough to stop falling for Mike Madden.

Chapter 15

Three more days pass, and I stay away from Deadzone. I try not to miss Mike’s “sweet dreams” texts when they stop coming. I do my best to ignore the hollow emptiness in my chest that makes it hard to sleep at night, to breathe at night. And I pretend I don’t care when Dee tells me that Mike has caught the debilitating cold that Kit birthed into the world.

She says Mike is sick—well, more dramatically, she tells me he’s dying. She says no one has heard from him and he’s probably rotting to death on his kitchen floor. And no one else can go help him out because everyone else is still sick or recovering too. She says I should go, but I know it isn’t my place. I’m only a week into Mike-addiction recovery, and I don’t want to fall off the wagon now, not after how difficult these past seven days have been.

Instead, I plead with Danica.

“You should go check on Mike,” I tell her one week after the disaster at the pond, going against my better judgment to try to convince her to do what any good girlfriend would do. “The girls said he’s not feeling well,” I continue while she sits folded up on her bed with pink foam separators wedged between her toes. She concentrates on her glittery silver brush as it swipes over her toenail.

“He’s a big boy,” she counters without looking up at me.

“You’re his girlfriend.”

“So?”

“So, don’t you even care about him?”

Danica scowls up at me. “Of course I care about him. Not that it’s any of your business.” She goes back to pampering her toes, snooty as ever. “I talked to him yesterday.”

“And he sounded okay?”

Her pause tells me more than her mouth ever will. “He said he was fine.”

“In a text?”

I sigh when she can’t even deny it. “Look, Hailey, this music video is shooting in seven days. What do you want me to do, go over there and get sick?”

I just stare at her, because what can I say to that? There are so many things wrong with what she just said, I don’t even know where to start.

When she notices the judgment in my expression, she makes a noise and begins blowing on her toenails. “How about this . . . How about you go over there, and you take him some tissues and some soup and whatever the hell else you think he so desperately needs, okay? Put it in a basket. Like a care basket.” She gazes up at me while still blowing intermittent breaths onto her toes. “I’ll give you the money. Get a can of soup, okay? Throw in some crackers. And a card. Sign it from me.” She begins shaking a black bottle of top coat. “You can even sign it from both of us if you want. You don’t even need to chip in. Just drop it off on his porch.”

“Are you serious?”

At the disdain in my voice, Danica rolls her eyes. “Or you can ring his doorbell and hand it to him and get sick. Whatever makes you feel better, Saint Hailey.”

An hour later, I’m standing on Mike’s porch, on the outskirts of the city, with a woven basket hanging from my hand. Inside it: three cans of soup, one box of tissues, one bottle of nasal spray, one bottle of cold medicine, one card with Danica’s name scrawled in my handwriting.

I think about leaving the basket on the porch.

I frown.

What if he’s really not okay? Someone should check on him.

I lift my hand to the doorbell.

I lower it.

Am I a bad person if I make sure he’s alright?

Am I a bad person if I don’t?

I sigh, take a deep breath, and lift my hand again. A press of the doorbell later, my foot is tap-tap-tapping against the cement stoop as I listen to the faint sound of the bell sounding inside Mike’s modest white house. I wait, and no one answers. I wait some more, and still, no one answers. I think about ringing it again, but instead, I force myself to set the basket on the porch. Maybe this is a sign. Maybe this is the universe telling me to leave.