“And you never will,” she says, pulling my face down and kissing my forehead. “Are you coming back?”
“I’ll be back in a week. I need some time to myself.”
She hugs me again. “Travel safely. And please give Nash and Noelle my love.”
“I will,” I say, smiling at her. “Nash will be mad that I didn’t bring these meatballs to him. I think he ate like twenty of them in one sitting when they were here in March.”
“Not too late to take them.” She holds up a plate to me. “Noelle is lovely, but I doubt she can cook like me.”
“No one can cook like you. See you in a week.”
I walk into the courtyard—tugging my bag over the cobblestones. I motion to the driver who’s standing beside his car.
“So we are breaking up?” Matty jogs behind me still pulling his suitcase.
“If you want to break up with me, that’s your decision. I want the week to think about it. I’ll be back and we can talk some more.”
He looks up at the sky for a second and then looks back down at me. “If you go to California without me this week, we’re done.”
The driver makes it over to us and grabs for our bags. I push my suitcase toward him. “Just this one.”
Matty’s glaring at me when I turn back around to him.
“Unbelievable,” he hisses. “Two years and you’re throwing it away just like that.”
“You’re throwing it away. Every bit of this is on you,” I say in an impressively even tone. “And God, Matty, an ultimatum? Seriously? What about our two years together makes you think I’d respond positively to that? It’s like you don’t know me at all.”
I get into the car without looking back at him, but as we pull away, I glance through the rear window. His arms are crossed over his chest as he watches me drive away.
When I turn around, the driver’s peeking at me in the rearview mirror. “Do you want to go back for him?”
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “There’s no going back.”
He turns up the volume on the radio. “It’s his loss.”
“You know what?” I say as an unexpected surge of relief fills my body. “It definitely is.”
* * *