2. Karma’s A Bitch

2

KARMA’S A BITCH

brISTOL

L ila fucking Perkins.

The one girl I’ve been avoiding for the past year, and the same girl who’s been lurking in my mind ever since. I’m not a mastermind by any means. I truly had no idea she’d be here, but I at least could’ve been proactive and asked who my potential costar was going to be.

I haven’t been in the same room with her since the day I called it quits—or more accurately, the day I broke her heart. Yeah, we might share the same friend group because my best friend’s girl is her best friend, but I’ve actively gone out of my way to make myself scarce whenever I know she’s going to be around.

I’m not going to stand here and tell you that I’m the innocent one in all of this…because I’m not. I’m the fucking asshole who screwed her over so badly that I’m surprised she hasn’t dragged my name through the mud by now.

It was the typical boy meets girl. Then boy falls for girl. Then girl falls for boy. Then boy gets scared and protects his fragile masculinity by leading girl on and subsequently stomping on her heart until it’s nothing but a sad pile of mush .

And now we’re potentially going to be working together for months, feeling up each other’s oiled bodies or whatever and pretending like everything is totally fine between us. Just judging by the death glare she’s giving me right now, we’re far from fine. Fine is all the way at the tippy top of an unrealistically high bluff, and we’re scrapping like dogs at the goddamn bottom. I deserve it too. Every dirty look. Every exasperated insult under her breath. She has every right to hate me. I hate me.

Not a day goes by where I don’t miss her. Not a day goes by where I don’t regret ending things. But I knew I couldn’t beg her to take me back—not after the way I threw her aside like she was nothing but a fuck buddy. It wouldn’t be fair to her, and somewhere deep in my subconscious, I already knew that she wouldn’t be interested in seeing me again, much less speaking to me. Did I take the coward’s way out? Absolutely. But I’d convinced myself I was staying away for her well-being, and that pathetic excuse was believable enough to protect my ego… until now .

Lila’s mouth zips into a hard line, and she maintains an air of professionalism while simultaneously failing to hide her blatant disdain for me. “Excuse us for a moment,” she says to the board, wrenching me aside by the elbow.

I stumble after her with my tail between my legs, biting back a hiss as she rips her hand away from my arm. Even though her touch is loaded with hate, it’s the first thing I’ve felt in a long time—the first electrifying zap to remind me of what we used to have…of what I lost .

“What the fuck are you doing here?” she growls, shedding that deceivingly polite fa?ade. An apex predator baring its teeth in defense, as equally beautiful as it is dangerous.

I may have been the idiot who broke things off, but that doesn’t mean it was a sound decision. That spark is still there, flickering away, refusing to be snuffed out. And the second I laid my eyes on her again, it was a lit matchstick to a puddle of highly combustible gasoline, producing a flame large enough to color the sky if it was given the chance to spread.

“I’m here for the same reason you are,” I counter, though with half the vitriol.

Fuck, I forgot how blue her eyes were. A rip current I can’t help but swim toward—that I can’t help but drown in.

“You don’t even model! You seriously expect me to believe that you didn’t know I’d be here? Kitty’s Catwalk is the only modeling agency in Riverside.”

My heart thunders like a stampede in my chest. “No, Lils, I didn’t know you’d be at this exact casting call. The agency didn’t tell me anything about my potential costar. If I had known you’d be here, I obviously wouldn’t be here.”

She snorts in disbelief. “Well, I am here, so you can walk out the door any time. You’re good at that, aren’t you? Leaving after you’ve committed to something.”

I flinch and step backward. Guilt twists a knife through my guts, dredging up a sick-tasting nausea. I can’t believe she thinks so little of me. I mean, I can believe it, but fuck does it hurt a lot more than I thought it would.

I quickly school my expression, choosing to approach the situation with charisma instead of caution. Which may or may not come back to bite me in the ass.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“Yes, you are. You’re going to turn down this job, give it to someone much more attractive, and be on your merry way so I never have to look at your stupid face again.”

“I think we both know that I’m more than qualified for this job.”

“Did your Neanderthal brain forget that modeling is about more than just looks? It’s about star quality, stage presence, chemistry .”

“Then I guess it’s a good thing chemistry’s never been a problem for us.” I slowly feeling the guilt begin to ebb, now wrestling with the inextinguishable desire that’s sprouted in its place.

“Please, I’d have more chemistry with a stale loaf of bread,” she spits, the blue of her eyes fully transformed into a dark grey sea, raging with relentless waves intent on crashing straight into me.

I know I messed up. I take full responsibility for my actions. And now, fate’s given me a second chance to make things right, and passing this up would be an even stupider decision than ghosting her in the first place.

There’s no way in hell I’ll subject myself to living the rest of my life on her shit list, but it’s not a problem of clearing my conscience. It’s a problem of still having… feelings …for her. Or maybe it’s a problem of foolishly believing that things can go back to the way they were between us. Ugh, I don’t know! I don’t know what these feelings entail. Not love, exactly. Love is a strong word—a word I’ve only used for a girl once, and all it got me was a front row seat at her funeral.

For the first time during her tirade, her voice cracks under the weight of…unbridled wrath? Obvious disillusionment? A lie she knows damn well is a figment of her imagination? “If you think I’m going anywhere near your underperforming body, then you’re crazier than I thought.”

Underperforming? Yeah, no. And the five orgasms I gave her in one night can attest to that.

It’s my turn to snicker. “If you’re going to argue with me, at least be truthful. There’s nothing underperforming about me. Unless you want me to jog your memory right here, and we can ask the board to be the judge of that. ”

Lila gasps like a woman scorned, yet I can’t ignore the way she fails to conceal the blush washing over her collarbones and creeping up the length of her neck. “The moment I voluntarily kiss you will be the moment I see the black, charred gates of hell.”

I bid a fleeting glance toward the row of executives watching as she talks “animatedly” to me, and I pray they’re too self-involved to be listening in on the very inappropriate conversation transpiring between us.

I open my mouth in rebuttal, but she shoots me down, still equipped with enough insults to continuously rip me a new one.

“If you want to talk about underperforming, let’s talk about your IQ. Oh, I know! How about your lack of consideration for other human beings? And let’s certainly not forget about the time you blew after two min?—”

That only happened one time, okay? It’s not my fault she has the hands of a wizard or a very talented seamstress. I’ve unleashed a goddamn beast, and it seems like I’m the only person still upholding any sort of professionalism.

Thankfully, before she can get any further, one of the directors clears their throat rather loudly. Awkward silence befalls the now-quiet studio, and I rake my hand through the front of my hair, desperately searching for something to say to make up for the rather livid show we just put on.

“Excuse me for interrupting , Ms. Perkins, but there isn’t a problem here, is there?” a snooty-looking man asks, popping one bushy eyebrow up and glowering at her from behind a crooked bird nose.

Lila quickly composes herself, brushes invisible dust motes off her dress, and flicks her hair behind her. If I was any closer to her, she would’ve hit me in the face.

“No, I’m sorry. I was just telling my potential costar here how excited I am to work with him,” she lies, refusing to even look my way to corroborate her statement.

Snooty Man scoffs. “It sounded like you were a little more than excited.”

Embarrassment paints Lila’s cheeks pink, and her glossed lips pop open to apologize, but I step forward before she has to explain herself. She doesn’t. Especially not to this asswipe.

“It’s my fault, sir. I’m sorry. Lila didn’t know I was auditioning for this job. She was just…surprised.”

I make the mistake of meeting her gaze—a gaze I’m prone to getting lost in—and receive an expected eye roll from her. Got it. She doesn’t need my help. She doesn’t want me to do anything. In fact, the only thing she wants me to do is to take a long walk off a short pier.

He seems rather unconvinced, though Rebecca swoops in and saves my ass by changing the subject.

“Alright, let’s get on with the chemistry shoot so that our art director, Makayla, can take a look at you two.” She gestures to the mock photoshoot set up in the back of the room, complete with a colorless backdrop, lights strong enough to give me one of those cluster headaches, and a sleek, black camera positioned at the forefront.

Both Lila and I are shepherded over as the art director—an elegant woman on the far end of the casting table—clacks over in her stilettos to join us. I’m so out of my comfort zone right now. I’ve never modeled before, if that wasn’t clear enough. Acting isn’t a huge factor in sports, but this is Lila’s forte. She’s a beast when it comes to these kinds of things.

“Alright, you two. We’re going for sexy, yeah? I’ll throw out some instructions and take a couple photos, and then I’ll regroup with the team. Sound good?”

Lila’s as still as a goddamn chicken when it senses danger, and I’m no better. It’s also like ten times hotter in here than it was thirty seconds ago. We both shuffle over to our mark at a freakishly slow pace, being diligent enough to evade each other’s eyes while we do so, and then everything bellies up.

“Sexy, guys! Sensual! I want to see hands on bodies!” Every shout and direction, no matter how loud, doesn’t take precedence over the nerves flaying me from head to toe, shining a very bright spotlight on my skill deficiency. Oh, God. I wasn’t prepared for this today. We haven’t touched each other since we were together.

At first, my gentleman instincts kick in and order my hands to stay respectfully on Lila’s hips, but a firmly worded disapproval comes from Makayla’s end. “Hold her like you can’t keep your hands off her, Bristol. You need to be closer to her.”

I glance at the position of our bodies, and we’re about three light years away from making skin-to-skin contact with one another.

“Do what she says!” Lila whisper-hisses, slipping in front of me so that her ass is fully seated against my crotch—which is, um, oh, oh, God . She crooks her neck up to look at me, arches her back, and leaves her arms at her sides for me to…hold? I think?

“Lean down. Like we’re about to kiss. Jesus, and do something with your hands.”

If my stomach wasn’t trying to revolt my chicken wrap from lunch, I would snap back with some witty—and highly suggestive—comment about the situation we’re in. But my professionalism is hanging on by a thin thread, and if I don’t prove to Kitty’s Catwalk that we have enough chemistry to make a baby, then I can say goodbye to this job. And this job is the only way I’ll get any alone time with Lila.

I do as Lila says, opting to hold her hands, and I angle my head down so we’re mere inches apart from partaking in some heavy-duty tongue action. If we wanted. Not that…not that she’d ever want that.

Yells and camera clicks mushroom into the air, but surprisingly, they’re not loud enough to derail my current train of thought—which is headed straight for Lilaville at breakneck speed.

“Ugh, your breath stinks,” Lila snarks.

Excuse me? “I popped a piece of gum before coming here.”

“And yet it still stinks.”

I grunt. “Yeah, well, your hands are clammy.”

“They’re only clammy because your hands are sweaty!” She glares at me, the low rumbling in her throat making my palms, ironically, even more slick with moisture.

Sweaty palms are the least of my worries right now because if we don’t change positions soon, the lower half of me is going to think we’re taking one hell of a trip down memory lane.

God, I forgot how amazing it felt to be this close to her. I forgot how good she smelled. Her skin is still as soft as ever, and I think those irresistible curves of hers are going to be the death of me.

Muscle memory seizes me at the worst moment because I drag my nose along the length of her neck, only half-consciously aware that she’ll probably stab her acrylics into my eyeballs the moment the photoshoot ends. But in some topsy-turvy turn of events, she plays up the sensuality, tipping her head back in— gasp, I know —pleasure. I don’t care if it’s an act.

“Alright! Give us a few minutes to discuss how the pictures turned out,” the art director says, beckoning her colleagues over.

Lila smooths down her dress in distaste, as if she’s brushing off my germs. “You better not have blown this for me,” she growls under her breath.

“Please, anyone with two working eyes can tell that we have chemistry together,” I scoff, crossing my arms over my chest. Luckily for me, I don’t miss how her eyes latch onto the bulge of my pecs. I’m not sure if it’s because of California’s dry-ass weather or a carnal appetite that’s grown since we both entered the studio, but she licks her lips. Hungry, unsatiated.

Her nose crinkles. “Yeah. Because I was doing all the hard work.”

“I’m pretty sure it was a joint effort.”

“Actually, it wasn’t. You had the sex appeal of a dead fish.”

Seriously? I did not have the sex appeal of a dead fish, and she knows that. If my sex appeal was so “nonexistent,” then why was her ass crack practically superglued to my dick?

Thankfully, before I poke the bear more than I already have, the whole team takes their respective seats at the table, coming to a noiseless standstill. All five members’ expressions are deadpan, drawing out their conclusion with some awkward and very unnecessary silence, and then, after what feels like an eternity, Rebecca finally speaks.

“We’re thrilled to have you both on board. Our first shoot will be next Wednesday. I’ll have someone reach out to you with the details,” she informs us, clicking her pen with finality and scribbling nonsense onto the white paper in front of her.

Lila and I both stand there, unsure whether we should say something or evacuate the room immediately, and our next course of action is decided for us when Rebecca dismisses us with a wave of her hand. That’s all. Nobody says anything. Nobody bothers with a goodbye.

Lila and I walk out of the building in shared mortification, nothing but mocking silence to accompany our rather pathetic departure. I trail behind her, in a hurry to leave but also not in a hurry to be riding her heels. And the minute we exit those swinging doors, she turns around and lets me have it.

“You humiliated me back there!” she shouts, thrusting an accusatory finger in my direction, making every passerby in a ten-foot radius privy to our altercation.

“I saved your ass back there!” I growl, liberating the stupid nice-guy guise I don’t know why I was trying to uphold.

Her voice somehow rises an octave higher, dripping with a dosage of venom—one that seeps through my bloodstream and surges right into my heart. “My ass wouldn’t need saving if you hadn’t booked this job at all!”

“What do you want me to say, Lila? I’m sorry, okay? Do you want me to apologize for what happened between us? Because I apologized after I ended things, and I’m apologizing now, but you obviously don’t want to hear me out.”

“No, I don’t. I don’t want some half-assed apology. Nothing you could say would ever make me forgive you, Bristol. Do you understand? Or have you taken too many hits to that big head of yours?”

She’s keeping me at an arm’s distance, but I wish I could twist that fucking arm and pull her straight into me, show her that I made a mistake, let my lips talk instead of my words because they’ve clearly been ineffective. But I ruined my chances of ever kissing her again. I let fear destroy the only good thing I still had in my life.

As much as I want to argue with her and prove her wrong, I finally confront the rational part of my brain that’s been MIA this entire time. And I let it go.

“I…”

Lila holds her purse against her stomach, and under the blanket of rolling storm clouds, her eyes are overcast with shiny tears. The anger she’s been tight fisting this entire time dissipates within a single second, giving leeway to an immeasurable amount of devastation sharpening the contours of her face. She’s small out here in the bustle of the city. She’s quiet. There’s no sign of the girl that commanded that entire boardroom .

She inhales a choppy breath, hesitant to blow it out like it’ll rattle her lungs. “You don’t need this job, okay? Please don’t make this harder than it already is,” she whispers.

There may be a ravine-wide distance established between us, but I can hear every bruising word of her plea as clear as day. I didn’t think anything could be worse than her screaming her head off at me, but I was wrong. This… heartache …lining her tone—it’s a thousand times worse.

I feel hot tears pulse behind my eyes, and I’m not strong enough to give her some peace of mind. No response forms on my tongue; it dies somewhere in the never-ending tornado of thoughts whirling in my head. My breath hitches in my throat, and anxiety rumbles through my stomach with the force of a goddamn thunderstorm. All I do is stand and soak in the first droplets of rain, watching helplessly as the girl I care about most in this world walks away from me and doesn’t turn back.

Fuck. It feels like she’s just spat shrapnel against my heart, and I don’t have the energy to pick out every bloody piece with my bare hands.

I don’t know how long I stand in the rain, but it’s long enough for my shirt and pants to get thoroughly drenched. I’m too paralyzed to seek refuge under an awning. Everything happened so fast. From the moment I stepped into that boardroom, I was hit with a flash of light, and now I’m paying for my mistakes by waterboarding myself on the corner of Sansa and Eighth Street.

A slate-colored Bentley comes careening in my direction, splashing through puddles of mud and narrowly missing me, and Hayes, my best friend, pops the door open to yell at me. “Bristol, get the fuck in the car!”

I slowly slog over to him, plop my dripping body into his high-quality seats, and practically bring three inches of rainfall into the car with me .

Hayes glances sideways at me, forfeiting any possibility of approaching this conversation with compassion or consideration. Not his strong suit, especially not with me. “What were you doing just standing out there? Can’t you see it’s pouring?”

I stare blankly at the flooded road ahead of us, only mustering the strength to nod. How badly does it really hurt to be run over? Because anything’s better than living with this tear in my heart.

Moisture slicks my hair to my forehead and sluices down my cheeks. Although my breath unfurls in uneven strokes, my blood’s still pumping, so I’m unfortunately still alive. I’m chilled all the way down to the bone, partly from the torrential downpour I subjected myself to and wholly from the unfamiliarity of Lila’s tone—an aloofness I never would’ve imagined she’d ever use with me. We’re strangers. Probably not even that if I’m being realistic. We’re enemies. Or I’m her enemy, and she’s my…I don’t know what she is to me.

Hayes’ voice cuts through the static wailing of my thoughts. “Bristol? What’s going on, dude?”

I speak for the first time in a few minutes, wincing when the words scratch against my throat, forgetting to soothe the ache with a swallow. “She was there.”

“Who?”

“Lila was there.”

“Oh,” Hayes murmurs, rolling his shoulders back and straightening his posture. He keeps his eyes glued to the road. Out of obligation? Out of pity? Definitely the latter, seeing as our lane is seemingly empty for a good few feet.

Hayes scratches the nape of his neck awkwardly. “Did she, uh, say anything to you?”

What didn’t she say?

I’d rather not relive the gory details, so I give a pretty threadbare response. “Yeah. ”

God, I feel sick. She hates me. A core-deep hatred that isn’t some cutesy enemies-to-lovers subplot. A core-deep hatred that she’ll probably hold against me until the day she dies because I, one, treated her like my girlfriend and then told her I didn’t want a relationship, and two, showed up at her audition and pretty much shoulder-checked my way back into her life.

Hayes drums his thumbs against the steering wheel, evidently unsure whether to give me space or coddle me. Usually I’m the one doing the consoling in my friend group. I’m the one who my hockey teammates come to for advice. I’m the levelheaded captain who knows best.

Right now, I’m far from it.

“Right. What did she say?” he follows up, his tone inflating with a softness that’s usually only reserved for his fiancée, Aeris.

“A lot of swear words.”

A loud laugh ricochets against the interior of his car, but upon my obvious lack of amusement, he clears his throat. “Sorry. Um. What else?”

“I mean, she pretty much suggested that I quit,” I say, despair throbbing deep in my belly, the weight of her supplication on haunting replay in my head—like the most abrasive-sounding record scratch in existence.

Hayes’ lips ruck into a frown, and while his sympathy is appreciated, all it seems to be doing is agitating the guilt lodged in the hollow cavern of my chest. “Bri, she can’t ask that of you. You earned this job just like she did.”

“I don’t care about the job, Hayes. I care about her. And if me being there upsets her this much, then maybe it’s for the best if I let someone else take my place.”

“You were the one who ended things, remember? You can’t keep reshaping your life around a girl who doesn’t want to fit into it anymore.”

“That’s not what I’m doing!” I yell at him, waving those words around like a loaded pistol and not caring who the barrel’s aimed at.

Hayes slams on the brakes, sends me flying into the glove compartment, and makes a sharp left turn into some abandoned parking lot. I groan and bounce back against the seat as he pulls the car diagonally across a parking space, kills the engine, then flicks off the headlights.

“It is what you’re doing,” he says in a much calmer voice. “I’m just trying to help you. You’ve been there when I’ve needed you, and for once in your life, you’re actually struggling to fix one of your— very rare —mistakes. Now I get to be here for you. I can’t just sit by and watch you destroy your life like this.”

“That’s a little melodramatic, don’t you think?” I grumble.

“This campaign is a huge deal for you—for the Reapers. Think of the exposure it would bring to the team. Quitting would be a mistake. Besides, would you really rather have some NBA star taking your place and getting all cozy with your ex?”

Ugh. Not that it’s any of my business, but no, I would not like that. In fact, I like that so little that sticking my dick in a blender would be more joyful. Yes, this campaign could be huge exposure for the team. Yes, I’m still protective of Lila, even though we’re not together anymore. Yes, Hayes is annoyingly right and I’m one ill-advised decision away from shaving off all my hair during a public meltdown. It’s been a year. A YEAR. I should be over her and under someone else, but I’m not. I’m still thinking about the future we could’ve had together.

“I know, okay? I know I have to put myself and the team first. But it fucking kills me to see her. It kills me to see what I could’ve had if I wasn’t a goddamn coward.”

Hayes settles his hand on my shoulder, sympathy crackling across his expression, his sky-blue eyes softening. “You’re not a coward. You’re still grieving,” he corrects.

I didn’t just break things off with Lila because I got bored, or because I realized we didn’t work out, or because I’m a gigantic asshole (though it looks that way now). I got… scared . When things got serious, I got scared. The feelings I felt for Lila were coming on like a freight train, determined to plow me down, and the only escape I found for myself was to swan dive off the tracks.

I’ve only ever been in one serious relationship with someone. And that was three years ago when I was in college. It wasn’t your run-of-the-mill love story. It was an I’m-going-to-marry-this-girl-one-day kind of relationship, complete with firsts that I never imagined myself sharing with another person. She was my first love; she was my first time; she was my first everything. And I was going to make her my last too.

Summit Kirstin. The smartest girl in my Psychology 101 class. The kindest girl on the dance team. The same girl who hated my guts until I found her trying to run her way across campus to make it to her midterm on time. I was coming back from my last class of the day, and I nearly ran her over with my bike because she was zigzagging around like a crazy person. And when I (so valiantly) steered clear of her and ended up ramming into a tree trunk, she stopped and breathlessly told me to watch where I was going.

This was twenty-one-year-old Bristol, alright? A lot less wise and a whole lot douchier. I basically told her to buzz off and abstain from running in the bike path , to which she gave me her whole spiel about being late. And then, for some unknown reason, I offered her my bike. She may have cussed me out, but that didn’t stop her from eventually relenting and riding my bike across campus. When I met her later that night at the library to retrieve my “stolen” property, everything changed.

At least, it changed for me. When she wasn’t threatening to turn my testicles into a kebab with her pencil, she had this gorgeous smile that lit up every room she walked into. She had these deep amber eyes that twinkled whenever the sun hit her just right. I was in love with her. Unconditionally, irrevocably, in love.

We were together for two years, and two years may not seem that long, but it was long enough for me to know I was going to make this woman my wife. I remember it like it was yesterday. 6:07 p.m. December twentieth. The roads were crowded with out-of-towners for the holidays. I had my apartment—a sad shack that I shared with Hayes—completely decorated, rose petals and red streamers and too many champagne bottles littered all over the place. The ring was a small, dainty thing bought from endless shifts working at a café on campus, and although it didn’t have a whopping shiner on it, I was hoping Summit would love it. She always preferred hidden beauties because they took more effort to love. Real effort.

I wasn’t trying to be overconfident, but in my gut, I knew she was going to say yes. So I waited nervously on the bed, ring in my pocket, listening to the deafening thump of my heart as I imagined all the milestones we would share together in the future. A small, woodsy wedding. A honeymoon in the Netherlands. Two kids: a boy and a girl. Years of growing old together and reminiscing about the early days.

We had our whole life ahead of us.

Or I did.

Summit was on her way back from work, but it was taking her longer than it usually did. It was a fifteen-minute drive. She was forty-five minutes late. I had no idea where she was or what was going on. So I called her, and when she didn’t answer, I flooded her phone with text messages.

And when she took her eyes off the road for a second to respond to me, a truck came barreling into her side and killed her on impact.

Three years ago, and the accident is still fresh in my memory— a scar on my heart that was healing when I was with Lila, but that’s since been reopened.

Lila’s the only girl I’ve been with since Summit. I never…I never told her about my ex. The only people who know are Hayes and my closest teammates. It’s not something I like sharing with people.

Since Summit’s hometown was Boston, that’s where she was buried, meaning I can’t take a depressing stroll down to her grave and visit her whenever I want. The last time I visited her was before I regularly started seeing Lila.

I wish I could hold her ring right now. For a long while after she passed, it helped me cope with her death. It brought me a sliver of peace to know I still had a part of her with me. But it’s not here anymore. I left it at my family’s cabin up in Big Bear, hoping that the distance would force me to move on.

It didn’t.

A strained cry gurgles out of me, so thick with pain that I can feel it clog my throat. “What’s wrong with me?”

Hayes leans over the console and pulls me into a hug. “Nothing’s wrong with you,” he whispers under his breath. “Bri, you went through something nobody should ever have to go through. And if you’re adamant about keeping Lila in your life, then maybe you should tell her?—”

I recoil from him like I’ve just been burned. “No. I can’t tell her. I just can’t, okay?” The intensity in my voice surprises me as much as it scares me. If I tell her, Lila will feel betrayed that I kept this a secret from her. If I tell her, I can say goodbye to ever earning her forgiveness.

Even Hayes mirrors my own shock, and he turns his head toward the windshield, hypnotized by the consistent scrape of the wipers upon rain-beaten glass. “Then what are you going to do?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” I respond hollowly.