“You know I can drink, I’m not going to kill myself in one night,” I say, folding my arms across my chest.

“Go ahead,” Dylan says wearily, signaling for the server. “Can we have a bottle of tequila on the table for my friend?”

The server brings a bottle of Don Julio, and we both just stare at it. I try to remember how it felt when we liked each other.

“Grace, I’m sorry. I’m not trying to be a dick. I’m exhausted. I want to work this out, but I can’t figure out if you want to be found anymore.”

“I don’t want to be found?” I ask, my voice tight. “You think I don’t want to be found.”

Dylan tenses, sensing something different about my tone. I lean toward him and speak quietly.

“Do you want to know why I left you? I left because you never wanted to see who I really was. You had this image of me as this little lost girl who you could rescue with your love, and you panicked when it turned out not to be as simple as that. Your love suffocated me because it was a love for somebody else. You never took the time to get to know who I really was, and the one night I tried to tell you, you didn’t want to know. That’s why I fucking left.”

Dylan listens to me, a weird expression I don’t recognize on his face.

“You do know that everyone feels like that? That it’s actually really hard to feel worthy of anyone’s love because we all know how shitty and selfish and fucked up we are on the inside, but we still work at it. You did the exact same thing to me. You always think I’m this honest, hardworking, genuine good guy, just the total opposite of everyone else in LA. You know that person doesn’t exist, right? But it never mattered to me, it just made me want to work harder to be the person you thought I was. People can change if they want to, Grace. I thought that’s how it worked.”

The server brings over a sizzling plate of enchiladas dripping in green sauce and melted cheese, with a sour cream heart dripping over it all. We both stare at the food in front of us but neither of us moves. I can feel the Percocet throbbing in my bag next to me, and I have to fight the urge to take one out and shove it down my throat at the table. I just need to wait for Dylan to go to the bathroom or look away for a couple of seconds, then I can at least try to blur the edges of this awful fucking day.

“What night was it?” he quietly asks instead.

“What?”

“You said you tried to talk to me. What night was it?”

“The night before I left. On the balcony.”

For a second I think that Dylan is actually going to laugh, but then he closes his eyes briefly, and when he opens them, he looks sadder than I’ve ever seen him.

“Do you want to know what was running through my mind that night?” he asks.

“That I’d fucked up, yet again? And you didn’t want to hear it?”

Dylan shakes his head.

“That I cheated on you, Grace. The night before. And I could say that I did it because I knew I’d already lost you, and it might even be the truth, but mainly I was lonely and I just wanted to be with someone and it not be so fucking complicated and sad all the time.”

After he’s finished talking, he slumps a little. I sit perfectly still and we’re something out of an Edward Hopper painting, the two of us sitting in front of a table of untouched food, trying our hardest to prove we were never good enough for each other.

“Was it with Wren?” I ask when I trust that I can speak without a shake in my voice.

“With a waitress at the Good Life. I thought you found out,” he says, realizing exactly as I do that we are always having a different conversation from the one we think we are having. “But you really did just leave.”

“Oh, please. Are you going to tell me how you cheating on me shows how much you love me?” I say. “So you win?”

“It’s never been a game. Neither of us is winning.”

Dylan is staring down at the table. I look at him for so long that the lights start to flare around him. I realize now that I have no idea who the person in front of me actually is.

“I know I shouldn’t have done it, but don’t pretend that you were perfect,” Dylan says quietly, and I know he’s referring to the nights I came home late and couldn’t remember where I’d been.

“You were never supposed to hurt me, Dylan. That’s the whole point of you.”

“People don’t have points. It doesn’t work like that.”

“Are you even sorry?” I ask, my voice searing.

“I don’t know right now, Grace,” he says after a moment, and it infuriates me even more because now that I know he’s not actually incapable of lying, why can’t he do it now, when I need him to?

I push myself out of the booth and stand up.

“That night, I was trying to tell you that Able sexually assaulted me,” I say. “Repeatedly.”

I leave before I have to watch the horror spread across his face.

* * *

? ? ?

I never texted Mario, so when I walk out the back of the restaurant, I don’t expect to find him there, hidden in the darkness, waiting for me. He raises his camera and takes over a thousand photos of me standing alone, tears streaming down my face. I scream at him to stop but it turns out I never really controlled any of it.

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

I take three pills as soon as I’m home, then I sit on the sofa in the living room, waiting for the morning to come. When it finally does, the sun casting streaks of white gold across the blue sky, I have to close the blinds because everything seems too hopeful with them open. It’s Christmas Eve and this is a city for people who wake up every morning believing that today could be the day their life is transformed, not for people like me. I should have known that everything I touch eventually gets destroyed, like a curse Able handed down to me.

I decline Dylan’s calls, and I keep the blinds down so that when he inevitably comes over to try to talk to me, which he does at around ten a.m., I can pretend not to be home. He knocks on the door and says my name softly, as if he can feel that I’m just feet away from him, my back pressed against the wall. When I don’t answer, he stands outside on the porch for a while, before his car engine starts and he drives back up the hill.

I try to muster some relief, or anger, or self-pity once Dylan has gone, but I can’t even pretend to myself that any of this is about what he told me last night. This is about what I told him, and how I can’t bear to see the truth reflected in his open, familiar face because, without ever meaning to, he’ll show me what I really am, which is a powerless, scared little girl. A victim. Everyone always tells you that the truth will set you free, but now that I’ve said the words out loud, I feel more alone than ever. I should have listened to Laurel when she tried to talk to me yesterday. It turns out some people aren’t supposed to have anything for themselves. I take another pill and wait for the clouds to slip over me. I will tread more lightly from now on.

* * *

? ? ?

The day slides past without me noticing. Darkness falls and I come to slightly, realizing that it’s time for me to go to Emilia’s. I consider messaging her to tell her I can’t make it, but I can’t admit to myself that it was all for nothing in the end.

I get dressed in a daze, putting on a vintage Smiths T-shirt and a faded pair of Levi’s. My body feels heavy and sluggish, and I stare at myself for so long in the mirror that I can almost see what I’d look like if someone were meeting me for the first time. Anemic skin, purple slugs under my eyes from lack of sleep, and that much-discussed extra weight padding out my belly and thighs.

I walk up to the peach house via the beach steps, something I haven’t done since that first day. I count eighty-six steps, and I’m out of breath by the time I reach the top. My boots are covered in a fine dusting of sand as I walk alongside the peach house until I’m standing in front of the entrance, holding the Le Labo bag and the small jar of Marmite I brought with me to remind Emilia that Able let her down.

Now that I’m here, I understand that the plan has changed. Expensive cars line the cul-de-sac, people just leaving them in the middle of the street as I stand there. The peach house is lit up from every room, a warm, inviting light that promises only beautiful people and golden-hued memories. I walk up to the front door as a feeling of snaking inevitability wraps itself around my insides.

I ring the doorbell, trying to disguise my trembling hand. Emilia answers the door and pauses for a moment when she sees that it’s me, one slender hand on the door frame.

“Grace. Thank you for coming,” she says rigidly. Already everything feels worlds apart from when we spoke on my porch yesterday, and I wonder whether I imagined the entire exchange.

“Of course I came . . .” I say, holding up the Marmite.