chapter seven

meghan

“I know you’re dying to say ‘I told you so’, so go ahead. Get it out of your system,” I told Chase as we watched a tow truck pull my car from the library parking lot.

But he kept his mouth shut, bending down to throw all the junk from his passenger seat into the back of his car. I wanted to point out his messiness probably wasn’t a good look for WWTV, considering he was driving around with their logo on the side of his car. But if he could keep his comments to himself, so could I. For now, anyway.

Inside the car, I put my watery iced coffee in the cup holder and dropped my bag between my feet. “Ugh. I really hope it’s just my battery and not my starter or something.”

“Could be your transmission,” Chase said, turning his keys in the ignition. “That’ll cost ya.”

I glared at him. “I’m trying to be positive here.”

“That’s a first,” he mumbled, glancing down at a Spotify playlist on his phone. Oh boy—what kind of music was he going to subject me to this morning?

Before I could brace myself, he hit play, and the unmistakable opening riff of “Sabotage” blasted through his speakers. A smug grin spread across his face as he shifted into reverse, perfectly syncing his movement with the drums in the song.

“You’re ridiculous,” I muttered, reaching to turn the volume down, but he gently pushed my hand away without even looking at me, smirking the entire time. Suddenly, I was taken right back to all the moments we had just like this one when we were dating. Always arguing about our music. There were a few bands we could always agree on, like Pixies, The Cure, and Joy Division–but I found myself listening to them all a lot less now. Chase liked to think he “educated” me about New Wave music. I couldn’t hear “Just Like Heaven” without remembering Chase rambling on about Robert Smith’s decades-long love story with his wife.

As he drove, I renamed the voice memos on my phone OWEN & MASON 1 and OWEN & MASON 2 while drafting my article out in my head. And then it hit me: I couldn’t remember packing my laptop charger that morning. I quickly rummaged through my bag at my feet, hoping I was wrong, but it wasn’t there.

“Shit.”

“What’s the matter?” Chase asked, turning down the music.

“I don’t have my laptop charger.”

“Oh. Do you need it?” What an idiot. I just blinked at him a couple of times until he got the clue. “Sorry, dumb question. Need me to swing by your place so you can grab it?”

I hated asking him to do another favor for me. God, how many times was he going to have to help me this week? Sighing, I pulled a cat hair off my knee and said, “Yes. If you don’t mind.”

“Not at all. Where you living now?”

I directed Chase toward my apartment complex, a cluster of modern buildings near the river with French Quarter-style architecture. They were meant to pay homage to the early French settlers of Woodvale, which I thought was appealing when I applied to live there a couple years ago.

But the building I was assigned was Pepto-Bismol pink, and I hated it.

That’s probably what Chase was chuckling about when we pulled into the lot. I just rolled my eyes as I rummaged for my keys in my bag. “I’ll just take a second.”

He put the car in park. “Do you still have Wanda?”

I paused, glancing at him. Wanda had been ours, once upon a time. That scraggly, underfed orange kitten showed up on our porch while we were watching Infinity War, and I let Chase name her Wanda after Scarlet Witch. I didn’t mind, because let’s be honest, Scarlet Witch is a badass. When Chase and I split up years ago, I sort of decided I was taking Wanda with me, and he didn’t protest. He knew I needed her more.

“Yeah, I still have her,” I said.

Chase looked down at his hand on the gear shifter and smiled. “Does she still sit on your chest and make biscuits when you try to sleep?”

“Every night,” I answered, and I almost felt my lips pull upward in a smile, too. Oops. Can’t let that happen. Though Chase let out a quiet chuckle, I saw a hint of sadness on his face. He missed Wanda, didn’t he? I closed my eyes for a second and inhaled before asking, “Do you want to see her, Chase?”

He glanced up. “Could I?”

“I guess.”

“Do you think she’ll remember me?”

I unbuckled. “Let’s find out.”

Chase trailed behind me as we walked past the daffodils lining the stoop that stretched along the front of the building. My apartment was on the first floor, and while I was a little bummed I didn’t have a balcony like my upstairs neighbors, I appreciated the easy access. “I’m going to guess the inside doesn’t match the outside,” Chase said with his hands in his pockets, nodding toward the pink siding.

Without answering, I swung open my apartment door to reveal just how right he was. I’d been sort of going for that whole “moody maximalist” look. I wasn’t allowed to paint, so the walls were an awful shade of millennial gray, but I did my best to make up for them with my decor. My tall, wooden bookshelves displaying all my books and curios took up an entire wall, which helped. A large tapestry depicting the phases of the moon stretched along the opposite wall above my forest-green velvet couch. I’d spent the past two years curating this space to look exactly the way I wanted, but I still wasn’t finished. It was an ongoing project, and the reason I always went broke around Halloween.

In here, it was Halloween 24/7/365.

“Wow,” Chase muttered as he walked through my doorway. He paused to take it all in, zeroing in on the philodendron plant hanging from a skull pot in front of my window. “You’ve become completely unhinged.”

“Thank you.”

“Wasn’t a compliment.”

I ignored him, clicking my tongue for Wanda. Normally, she’d emerge from her hiding spot to greet me, but she must have sensed I had a guest. “Here, kitty, kitty. Where are you, baby girl?”

As I made my way around the apartment, I eyed Chase, who was standing before my living room shelves with his hands in his pockets as he took it all in. I wanted to tell him he was here for Wanda, not to nose around my things, but it wasn’t worth the argument.

Wanda wasn’t on my bed, and she wasn’t hiding behind the hamper in the bathroom, either. I continued to flit around the apartment, clicking my tongue every few steps. “I don’t know where she’s hiding.”

“She’s right here,” Chase said, and I whirled around, following his gaze to the bottom shelf, where Wanda was sitting atop a stack of botany books, staring up at him with her enormous pupils. He took a couple steps forward, warily holding his hand toward her. I could tell she wanted to dart away, but there wasn’t really anywhere for her to go. And then, after giving him a good sniff, she sat up, bowing her head down so she could rub against his hand.

Chase looked over at me and beamed. “She remembers.”

I wished I could deny it, but she began to purr as Chase scratched her ears. I watched him pet her, sticking his fingers beneath his glasses to wipe the corner of his eye. Was he about to tear up over this? It almost made me feel guilty about taking her from him all those years ago. “I guess she missed you,” I said, walking over to join him in front of the bookshelf. I stood back with my arms folded against my chest, letting him take his time to pet her. When he finally stopped, he turned and nodded toward the record player on a little table nearby.

“So, you still listen to music on vinyl, huh,” Chase asked, adjusting his glasses to get a closer look at the records on the bottom shelf. I could almost feel the judgment rolling off him as he silently sized up my album choices.

In that moment, the memory of our last big fight, the one before I left. I had been sitting on the floor in front of this very record player in our old apartment, listening to one of my mom’s old records. It had become my nightly routine, letting the music wash over me until the tears came. The intro to “Don’t Stop” by Fleetwood Mac did it every time. I couldn’t hear that song without seeing my parents dancing in the kitchen, singing it to each other like they didn’t have a care in the world.

On that particular night, Chase approached me slowly and quietly, walking over to lift the needle from the record. He squatted before me with a sympathetic look on his face—an expression I’d grown to perceive as more condescending than anything else—and said, “Don’t you think it’s time to move on?”

Those words crushed me. They took all the sadness I’d been carrying and twisted it into something ugly. With a sudden surge of anger flowing through my veins, I sprang up, grabbed the Rumours album off the record player, and smashed it against the corner of the table. Chase held up his hands to shield himself from the shards of plastic flying everywhere.

“There, I’m over it. Are you happy?” I spat the words at him, my voice trembling with rage and pain. I had never done anything like that before, and the look of horror on Chase’s face mirrored my own shock. That was my parents’ record. What had I just done?

But underneath the anger, I could feel my heart breaking. Six months of grieving, and he decided that was enough. He’d been making those little comments for weeks, like knocking on the bathroom door and asking if I was done crying yet, or putting his head in his hands when we had to pull over on the way to Sean and Erika’s because some flowers reminded me of my mom.

He was over my grief, and he wanted me to be over it, too.

That night, I dropped to the floor, tears streaming down my face as I tried to pick up the broken pieces of the record, but my hands were shaking too much. I was hysterical, sobbing so hard I could barely breathe. I couldn’t even see. And then Chase was there, wrapping his arms around me from behind, holding me tight. His hands slid just beneath my breasts, pulling me into him. But instead of encouraging me to let it out, he shushed me. Even after all of that, he was still trying to get the crying to stop. He didn’t get it. He never would.

I jerked away from him, something inside me snapping. “You’re right, it’s time to move on. From you.”

In a daze, I packed up all of my things—and Wanda—and he just watched me go.

He didn’t grovel.

He didn’t fight for me.

That night, Chase just let me go.

And now, the two of us were staring at that same record player in silence. Suddenly, it dawned on me he’d asked a question. “Oh. Uh, yeah. I still use the record player sometimes, especially when the Wi-Fi is down.”

“Ah.”

Chase was staring into my eyes with an intensity that made my heart speed up. Why did this feel awkward all of a sudden? I was the first to break the connection, turning away from him to unplug my laptop charger from the outlet by the couch. “Ready to go?”

Chase nodded. He gave Wanda a few more ear-scritches before following me toward the door. And as he started the car, scrolling through his playlist for another song to torture me, I wondered if the memory of that night haunted him as much as it did me.