“What did you think of her gray and blue dress?” I ask, remembering the mist-colored dress I had tried on in the fancy fitting room, and how gorgeous the blue wildflowers printed on the fabric had been. I had felt beautiful in that dress until I walked out to see Danica wearing the same one.

“I didn’t watch the video,” he says. “I just deleted the message and blocked her new number.”

“Oh.”

“Did you really think I’d bother watching it?”

“Aren’t you at least curious about what she has to say?”

There’s a long moment of silence, and then Mike asks, “Do you know how many times I’ve thought about Danica since leaving?” I brace myself for the answer, and he says, “None. Not one. Do you know how many times I’ve thought about you?”

I barely have time to wonder before he answers, “I think about you all the time, Hailey. Do you know what I do before bed each night? I pull up this picture I took of you the morning I left. You were sleeping, and I know that makes me a creep, but I don’t care. You were so damn beautiful, I just wanted to stare at you forever. So I took a picture, and every night, I look at it to remind myself that you’re what I’m coming home to. That I’ll get to see you like that again because I’m the luckiest fucking guy alive to have you at home waiting for me.”

I’m speechless when he emphasizes, “I don’t think about Danica, Hailey. I never think about her. She doesn’t even cross my mind. If I’m thinking about a girl, it’s you, because you’re the only girl for me.”

I’m silent for a long time while I try to calm my cartwheeling heart. And when I speak, I take the easy way out and crack a joke. “You took a picture of me sleeping?” I say with mock offense.

Mike chuckles. “You were covered up by the sheet, I promise.”

“Creep.”

“Worth it.”

I smile at the way my heart flutters, and Phoenix jumps up on the couch beside me as I listen to what sounds like Mike fluffing a pillow on his end of the line. “Are you allergic to dogs?” I ask as I debate making Phoenix jump down. She lays her front paws on my lap, and I scratch her behind her ear.

“Why?” Mike asks.

“Just wondering . . .”

“That’s pretty random.”

“I like random.”

“Hailey, if I was allergic to dogs, I don’t think I could date you.”

I bark out a laugh, knowing damn well I smell like dog ninety percent of the time, and Mike snickers against my ear. “You’re such a jerk!”

“You set ’em up, I knock ’em down.”

I’m still laughing when he says, “I love you, Hailey.”

“I love you too,” I say with a pink-tinted smile on my cheeks.

“Sixteen days.”

“Sixteen days,” I agree, petting a dog that shouldn’t be here and carrying a decision I can’t make

Sixteen days until I have no choice.

Chapter 44

I thought it was lonely inside Phoenix’s cage at the back of the shelter . . . but in Mike’s house, with his big couch and his big bed and all of his very-Mike things, it’s so much lonelier. He’s everywhere—in his soft bedsheets, in his oversized TV, in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle figurine he has sitting on his mantel (Michelangelo, of course). He’s everywhere except really here.

I spend most of my time at his place, since I still haven’t found anyone else to take Phoenix in (and if I’m being honest with myself, I haven’t looked very hard), and every minute I spend in his house, with him on the other side of the world, makes the hole in my heart grow and grow and grow. After he leaves Malaysia, his schedule gets as hectic as he warned me it would. The texts become fewer and the calls grow further apart.

It’s a mid-November Saturday, less than a week before Thanksgiving, when my brother says, “I miss Mike.”

It’s been over two days since I last spoke to him myself. We’ve tried, of course—with him calling me, or me calling him—but after forty-eight hours of phone tag, I’m beginning to feel less like I’m missing him and more like I’m mourning him. For the past five weeks, I’ve felt like the calls and the texts weren’t enough—like I needed more, always more—but now that I’m not getting them, they feel like everything. Which leaves me with nothing.

“I finally find some time to play Deadzone with you,” I admonish Luke as I sit on Mike’s couch with a game controller in my hands, “and all you’re going to do is complain about missing Mike?”

“You suck tonight,” Luke counters, and as if on cue, my player gets shot in the head for the umpteenth time.

“Sorry,” I sigh, knowing he’s right. I’m distracted.

Mike will be home in eight days, and even though I miss him more than I’ve ever missed anything in my life—even though all I want in this world is to hug him and kiss him and feel his arms around me—it feels like too soon. I still haven’t figured out a way to continue dating him without having school pulled out from under me, and the thought of losing either one of those things has kept me up at night. It’s given me nightmares I can’t remember when I wake up near tears in the morning. But I can feel it—the stress that roots in my muscles and sits there like a toxin as I sleep.

“Do you miss him too?” Luke asks, and I know he’s still sneakily trying to push me into the relationship he has no idea I’m already in.




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