Page 131 of The Breakup Artists

I open my mouth, ready to regale him with my best logic, but I only sputter. “It feels too far.”

“Okay, why?”

“Because, August. I love this place, and I’m secretly a lame townie. Are you happy now?”

“I get that you love it,” he says. “But—”

“No, you don’t. You’ve been trying to get away since forever. You don’t like being in your house. You’re always frustrated with your mom. You barely talk to anyone besides me. You gave up on this place when Des died.” I stop abruptly, wishing I could pull it back. We only just started talking about her, and now I’m on a path to muck it up. I break eye contact. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

For a moment he just sits there, looking out the window and concentrating on something far away. And when he does finally speak, he says the one thing I never thought he would. “Everything you said is true. But if you think I don’t understand why you love it here, you’re wrong.” He pauses. “And it’s still not a reason.”

I bristle. “You of everyone should know that you don’t get to decide other people’s lives for them. You say I’m acting like someone from our cases. Well, so are you—the crappy boyfriend.”

“Valentine,” he says, and the shock of him using my full name makes me freeze. He takes a breath, in what I can only assume is an effort to not snap back. “Last night you did something for me. You got me to confront a part of myself that I’d hidden away. And when I came home and laid down, it was the first time in forever that I didn’t feel anxious in the quiet, that I wasn’t sketching my fears onto the ceiling—”

“Sketching?” I say and glance at his ceiling.

“Imaginary sketching,” he clarifies. “For months now, sketches have been appearing in my thoughts. These past few weeks they’ve gotten more insistent. I haven’t been able to get away from them, like the parts of my personality I’d locked away were messing with me.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I say, my voice more subdued.

“Because I didn’t want it to be real. It made me feel like a failure, like I couldn’t even do one simple thing—give up art for my sister.”

My eyes widen. “Des wouldneverwant you to give up art for her.”

“I know,” he says, thoughtful. “But it felt like I had to. And now I look at you, the best person I know, and I don’t want you to make the same mistakes I did. If you don’t want to go to Berkeley, if you’ve actually changed your mind, then I’ll support you. You know that. But if you’re doing it because you’re scared, then I’ll fight for you the same way you fought for me.”

I let out a long exhale and drop into his desk chair, eyeing him suspiciously. Who is this open, expressive August? “It’s not that I’m scared,” I say. “It’s that I’m worried.”

He considers it. “Well, I’m scared,” he says so genuinely that I think I misheard him.

“No. You’re not.”

“I am. I’m scared that I’ll never paint again. I’m scared that I will. That I won’t be able to afford Berkeley, that Mom won’t be okay without me. I’m scared all the time, Tiny.”

I press my lips together, straightening the neon bracelets on my wrist.

He waits, watching me as I try to untangle my thoughts. “Tell me what you’re worried about.”

I exhale. “I don’t...” I stop, slowing down and really thinking about it. “It just feels like leaving is permanent, ya know?”

“Like you can’t come back?”

“Exactly,” I say. “I mean, I know I can come back physically. No one’s stopping me. But I just worry I’ll be different, that you’ll be different, that everything will change.”

“We will,” he says, and my stomach drops. “But that’s okay.”

“But what if it’s not?”

“Do you remember that time you decided to cut your own bangs?” he asks.

“Way to kick me when I’m down.”

He smirks. “You freaked out, begging your parents to let you get hair extensions.”

“And they refused like the heartless beasts that they are.”

“Because you can’t go backward, your mom said, that the only way through things, especially hard things, is forward,” he says. “Even if you stay here, you’ll change. Nothing stays the same, no matter how much you cling to it.”