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“I don’t want a violin from you anymore.” Her lips trembled. Tears welled in her eyes. “I’d just feel sad every time I played it. You’re making me really sad, Milo, because you’re being weird and prickly, and acting like…acting like you don’t like me at all.”
“You know that’s not true.”
“Really?” She passed a hand over her eyes and stalked from the kitchen, through the living room, and down the hall.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
I saw her wipe away a tear as she went into her room. “I’m leaving. I’m not staying here anymore.”
I followed her and got in her way. “You don’t have to leave. Can’t we just go back to how things were before last night? We’ll be friends. You can sleep in my guest room. We can hang out with Blue.”
She ducked around me and went to her closet for her luggage. “I don’t think that’s possible now.”
I didn’t help as she carried out a suitcase. “I don’t want you to leave, Alice, not like this.” I tried—and failed—to get in her way. “Do you remember what happened last time you left, or nearly left? What almost happened to you?”
“Yes, I remember,” she said, throwing her suitcase on the bed. “It’s very hard to forget that my apartment exploded. That’s why my violin’s gone, and all the clothes I liked, and all my shit. I would have exploded too, right? Maybe I should have, so I could have avoided all this embarrassment.”
“Don’t say things like that. And what embarrassment are you talking about? I’m not rejecting you. I’m trying to protect you.”
“You keep saying that, like you’re a fucking land mine or something.” She threw the contents of her underwear drawer in the suitcase, and added jeans and shirts on top of it. “I’m going to stay in a hotel.”
I grabbed her around the waist as she headed back to her closet. “No, you’re not.”
“You can’t stop me.” She broke away and started jerking clothes from their hangers. “The insurance will pay for it.”
“You’re not storming out of here to move into some random hotel, not like this. No.”
“Are you going to hold me hostage?”
She glared at me from inside the closet, and for a moment, I thought how fun it would be to hold her hostage, tie her up, put duct tape over her sassy mouth.
Yep, that was why I couldn’t be with her. Fuck me. Damn it.
I left her to her angry packing, went over by her door, and opened a window on my phone. She glared at me, throwing clothes into the other new suitcase we’d bought to replace the ones that’d gone up in flames.
“What are you doing?” she snapped.
“Calling Ella to see if you can use her place, the apartment she got through work. She mostly lives with Devin now. Do you think that would work? It’s a decent-sized two bedroom on Mercer Street.”
“I don’t want to move into your friend’s apartment. Then you’ll know where to find me.”
“So our friendship is over forever?” I threw up my hands. “You’re going to hide from me, and avoid talking to me ever again?”
“Yes, I would like to,” she yelled.
“I think you’re overreacting.” When I got angsty, more of my Italian accent came out. “Are you that hard up, that you need to be with a soulless sadist like me?”
She shoved down a jumble of clothes and slammed one of the suitcases shut. “It has nothing to do with being hard up. And you’re not soulless. Last night, I thought you were even more amazing than I knew. I thought everything felt great. I thought it was perfect.”
“Alice.” I sighed. “That feeling won’t last.”
She shook her head and went back to packing. “You’re such a fucking asshole.”
“Thank you for finally realizing what I’ve been telling you all along.” I looked down at my phone. “Ella says you can use her place. She has the lease for two more months, so she’ll meet us there with the keys.”
Alice opened her mouth to refuse the offer, but my expression must have made her reconsider.
“Fine. That’s nice of her,” she finally said.
