Sweet Filthy Boy

So why didn’t I take off the ring as soon as I noticed it?

“I d-don’t—” I start, and he blinks up to my face. “I didn’t want to put it down and lose it. In case it was real or . . . belonged to someone.”

“It belongs to you,” he says.

I look away, eyeing the table, and notice two wedding rings there, between the salt and pepper shakers. They’re men’s rings. Is one of them his? Oh God.

I start to slip mine off but Ansel reaches across the table, stilling me, and then lifts his other hand, his finger still decorated with a ring, too. “Don’t be embarrassed. I didn’t want to lose it, either.”

This is too weird. I mean, way too weird for me. The feeling is like being pulled under by a violent wave. I’m suddenly hit with panic knowing that we’re married, and it’s not just a game. He lives in France, I’m moving in a few weeks. We’ve just made a huge mess. And oh my God, I can’t want this. Am I insane? And how much does it cost to get out of this sort of thing?

I push back from the table, needing air, needing my friends.

“What is everyone doing about this?” I ask. “The others?” As if I need to clarify who I mean.

He swipes a hand over his face, and looks over his shoulder as if the guys might still be there. Turning back to me, he says, “They’re meeting in the lobby at one, I think. And then I guess you girls plan to head home.”

Home. I groan. Three weeks living at home with my family, where even the adorable boy chatter of my brothers playing Xbox can’t drown out the killjoy of my father. And then I groan again: my father. What if he finds out about this? Would he still help pay for my apartment in Boston?

I hate depending on him. I hate doing anything that triggers the giddy little smirk he wears when he gets to tell me I screwed up. I also hate that I might throw up right now. Panic starts like a slow boil in my stomach, and heat flashes across my skin. My hands feel clammy and a cold sweat prickles at my forehead. I should find Lola and Harlow. I should leave.

“I should probably find the girls and get ready before we . . .” I wave vaguely in the direction of the elevators and stand, feeling sick for an entirely different set of reasons now.

“Mia,” he says, reaching for my hand. He pulls a thick envelope from his pocket and looks up at me. “I have something I need to give you.”

And there’s my missing letter.

Chapter FOUR

AFTER THE ACCIDENT, I’d barely cried in the hospital, still convinced it was all some horrible dream. It was some other girl, not me, who’d crossed University and Lincoln on a bike the week before high school graduation. Someone else was hit by a truck that didn’t stop at the red light. A different Mia shattered her pelvis and broke her leg so thoroughly a bone extended from the skin of her thigh.

I’d been numb and in shock the first few days; the pain was dulled by a steady drip of medication. But even through the haze, I was certain it was all a mistake. I was a ballerina. I’d just been accepted to Joffrey Ballet School. Even when the room filled with my mother’s sobs and the doctor was describing the extent of my injuries, I didn’t cry—because it wasn’t about me. He was wrong, my chart had been switched, he was talking about some other person. My fracture was minimal. Maybe my knee was sprained. Someone smarter would come in any minute and explain it all. They had to.

But they didn’t, and the morning I was discharged and faced with the reality of life without dancing . . . there wasn’t enough morphine in the world to insulate me from the truth. My left leg was ruined—and with it, the future I’d worked toward my entire life. The stutter I’d struggled with for most of my childhood had returned, and my father—who spent more time researching the odds of my dancing career being lucrative than he did attending my recitals—was home, pretending not to be inwardly celebrating.

For six months I barely spoke. I did what I had to: I carried on. I healed on the outside while Lola and Harlow watched over me, never treating me like I was held together with a fake smile and staples.

Ansel leads me to the same corner I took him to last night. It’s decidedly less dark this morning, less private, but I barely notice with my eyes boring into the envelope he’s placed in my hand. He has no idea the significance of this, that the last time I wrote myself a letter was the day I decided to start talking again, the day I told myself it was okay to mourn the things I’d lost but it was time to move on. I sat down, wrote all the things I was afraid to say out loud, and slowly began to accept my new life. Instead of moving to Chicago like I’d always planned, I enrolled at UC San Diego and finally did something my father deemed worthy: graduating with honors and applying to the most prestigious business schools in the country. In the end I had my pick of programs. I’ve always wondered if subconsciously I was trying to get as far away as I could, from both him and the accident.

The envelope is wrinkled and worn, creased where it’s been folded and probably pulled in and out of his pocket over and over, and reminds me so much of the letter I’ve read and reread over the years that I have a flash of déjà vu. Something’s been spilled on one corner, there’s a red smudge of my lipstick on the opposite side, but the flap is still perfectly sealed, the edges not pulling away even a little bit. He didn’t try to open it, though judging by his anxious expression he’s most definitely considered it.

“You said to give that to you today,” he says quietly. “I didn’t read it.”