“Great,” he said, eyes still on the paper. “I’ll see you around later. I assume you’re out with your friends tonight?” He didn’t wait for my response before heading into the other room. “Not too late, okay?”

A moment later I could hear him talking to Peter, and the sound of CNN’s theme music. The TV in his office, which we’d mostly used to watch John Wayne fight bad guys, was now back to what it usually was doing, keeping him plugged into everything that was happening in Washington.

I stood alone in the kitchen for a moment, trying to get my bearings, telling myself I shouldn’t be surprised, not really. But even as I tried to believe this, it didn’t change that I felt like someone had just pulled the rug out from under me, and then, for good measure, the floor.

My phone buzzed, and I pulled it out of my pocket.

TOBY

I looked down at this, shaking my head. The end of this emoji bet could not come fast enough as far as I was concerned.

ME

We can’t have pizza—because you forgot you had to work?

TOBY

It wasn’t a big deal—it was the kind of thing that happened all the time. But I could have used the drive up to Mystic to clear my head and talk through what was happening.

ME

It’s okay—we’ll do it another time.

I closed out of Toby’s text and pressed the button to call Clark. If I couldn’t talk to Toby, maybe I could talk to him. Not that he would be able to do anything, but talking it through might help. I wanted to hear his voice, but my call went right to voice mail, and I realized he probably had it turned off—because he was working.

Because he had a job, one that he would also be going back to once the summer ended. Just like my dad was going to do.

In just a few weeks, when everything was going to change.

I could feel myself start to get the panicky, spiraling feeling I hadn’t had since the start of the summer. I had thrown out my plans and my schedule and had just been going with the flow all summer—taking Palmer’s advice and not thinking about the future. But that hadn’t meant the future had gone away. I’d just been ignoring it. I hadn’t considered the fact that everyone else was treating this summer as temporary. It was like I was just now realizing that I’d spent the last few months in a bubble, thinking it was real life. But it wasn’t. And I never should have let myself forget that.

When my phone rang a second later, I tried not to be disappointed that MAYA was coming up on the caller ID. It wasn’t like Clark was psychic, after all, able to know when I needed to talk to him the most. “Hey, Maya.”

“Andie!” she said, and I could hear the stress in her voice. But I wasn’t that surprised—if nothing was wrong, or if there was a scheduling change, she would have texted me. “Hi! Quick question—are you busy this afternoon? Around one?”

“No,” I said automatically, since I’d cleared the afternoon to eat pizza in Mystic, which was now very much not happening. “Need me to do a walk?”

“Well . . . kind of,” Maya said after a pause, which should have been my first clue that something was up. “I did a drop-off at a vet, but can’t make the pickup and was wondering if you could do it.”

“Oh,” I said. “Sure. Which dog is it?”

“It’s actually a cat,” Maya said, and I could hear how hard she was trying to make this sound fun and exciting, but not even coming close to pulling it off.

“Oh, no,” I said, since I had a feeling I knew exactly which cat we were talking about. “Is this Miss Cupcakes?”

“Oh, you know her?” Maya asked, and I could hear the relief in her voice. “Thank goodness. So you know what you’re in for.” I tried to get myself to think fast, wishing I hadn’t so definitively told Maya that I was free, but before I could come up with anything, she was pointing out that the hard part of the job was already done, since she’d had to corral the cat and get her into the carrier, and all I’d have to do was pick her up and bring her home. It was so logical, I really couldn’t argue with it. And since I had nothing else to do that afternoon, I’d agreed.

And it truthfully wasn’t that bad, picking Miss Cupcakes up. The strangest thing, I realized as I brought her carrier into the kitchen, was being in Bri’s house without anyone else there. I pushed open Bri’s front door and stepped inside, holding in front of me, at arm’s length, Miss Cupcakes’s carrier, which contained a very angry Miss Cupcakes. “Look, you’re home,” I said, setting the carrier on the ground while trying to keep my hands away from the airholes, which I’d learned the hard way Miss Cupcakes was very skilled at getting her claws through. “Okay? Stop being such a jerk.” As though the terrible cat could understand me, she started yowling, the carrier rocking back and forth. I reached over to unlatch the door, keeping the rest of me as far away from it as possible, and once it was open, took a huge step back. The cat shot out of the carrier, hissing, and disappeared into the kitchen. I let out a breath, thinking, for the umpteenth time that day, just how much I preferred dogs.

I’d texted Bri earlier to see if she was going to be around but hadn’t gotten a response back, which made sense, since she’d told me she had plans. Even though I’d been in her house more times than I could count, being there alone was making me feel like an intruder. I closed the latch on the empty carrier, then wrote a quick note to go along with the letter from the vet that they’d given me when I’d picked her up.