The Last House Guest

an apology only counted when you knew their flaws and made it anyway.

I knew how it could be—how you could become so lost in your own anger and grief and bitterness that you can barely see anything else.

How you could get pulled into the orbit of one world, thinking you had a place in it, even if you weren’t fully part of it.

Don’t forget that I once burned my own life to the ground piece by piece. Don’t think I won’t do it again.

When he turned, I saw him as Sadie might, without the layers and years that had come between us.

That to change your life, to truly change it, you had to be willing to lose.

Except I was. In one way or another, I was never more myself than right then. Desperately, terrifyingly, unapologetically myself.

I knew the dangers of the water, had known them half my life, growing up here. But I had not considered the dangers inside other people.

This girl held perfectly still until it was over, then blinked rapidly, giving me the type of sudden hug that simultaneously revealed her blood alcohol content.

And him—the way he’d look at her. The crooked grin when he was trying to hide what he was thinking, giving way as she leaned closer.