Page 10 of With Any Luck

He leans a little closer over the table. His eyes have turned dark and inky, like my favorite emerald pen. “Just close your eyes, Audrey Love.”

So I do. I’m not sure what happens next—no, that was a lie, I know exactly what happens next, but I’m too stunned to do anything about it. Because he takes my chin in his grip, and tilts it up a little, and then his lips catch mine.

-Last Night-

“Really,that’syour idea?” Rhett asked, baffled. We were sitting on the curb, having finished most of the stale doughnut holes, sobering up a little more. “Just run away?”

“If life gets hard, hit the bricks,” I replied, quoting my favorite meme. “Real winners quit.”

“Audrey, I can’t just ... fuck off. What would Carmilla think? She’d murder me.”

I threw up my hands. “Well, then I don’t know what to tell you. You clearly aren’t happy right now, and it’s the night before yourwedding.”

“It’s not the wedding that matters,” he said, but he sounded like he was trying to convince himself, too. “Sometimes when you love someone, you both have to do shit you don’t want to.”

“Whatyoudon’t want to do. She’s getting everything she wants,” I pointed out.

“You really think she wants all of this?”

I started listing everything out, counting on my fingers. “We’ve flown up toherchildhood home, we’re staying at the bed-and-breakfast owned byherparents, and the guest list is filled withherfriends—”

“I doubt she knows half the people on the list, either—”

The flowers areher grandmother’sfavorite, the dateher parentspicked,” I went on. “There’s so little of you in any of this, it’s like you aren’t even here.”

“Her parents have been ... incredibly overbearing,” he muttered. “I just love her. I’ll do anything for her.”

I tilted my head, studying the lines of his face. He looked ten years younger in the streetlight, so much so I could almost pretend that we were back in college, sitting on the curb outside Krispy Kreme as he told me about his latest date with some girl from some class. He talked about them all the same—he never used their names, he barely noted their hair color or what they wore.

I missed those days. I missedthatRhett. The one who was alone with me, instead of together with someone else.

“I know you’ll do anything for her,” I said in the quiet night. My words came out in puffs of frost. “But will she do anything for you?”

He shoved himself to his feet. “I’m done talking. You don’t understand,” he said and left without another word.

I cursed under my breath and buried my face in my knees.Way to go, Audrey,I thought to myself.You should’ve just shut up and eaten your sugar holes.

It wasn’t that I doubted Carmilla wasthe one, but I wasn’t sure I wanted her to be, because then I’d be alone.

That was frightening, and yet here I was: alone anyway.

At least, until footsteps came up behind me. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean what I said,” I mumbled into my knees, thinking it was Rhett who’d come back to check up on me. Tears brimmed in my eyes, and I couldn’t stop them because I was tired, and when I was tired I felt all washy, and I wasn’t very good at holding in my emotions at two in the morning. “I just—I don’t know what I’ll do after all this. It was just us, youknow? And now it’s Carmilla, too, and I like her so much but ... I won’t be your ride or die anymore. I’ll be alone.”

“So will I,” said the owner of the footsteps behind me.

My breath caught in my throat, and I glanced back and realized with a bolt of surprise that it wasn’t Rhett at all.

It was Theo.

He sat down beside me on the curb and opened his mouth to—I guess—ask what was wrong with me, why I was being so silly, crying on the curb, but I just let out a sob and dove into his shoulder. And to my surprise, he held me as I cried into his peacoat.

“Hey, hey, you won’t be alone forever. Someone like you? You’re bright and funny and talented,” he said.

I sniffed. “You don’t even know what I do.”

“You’re a copyeditor. You always write in a green pen. Your favorite food is a s’more, and your favorite word is ‘susurrus.’”

In surprise, I sat up from his shoulder and studied his face in the flickering streetlight. The breeze in from the sea, smelling of brine and fish, tousled his hair.

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