“Are you going out with him?” Olivia asks.

Charlie’s head swivels back and forth between Griffin and me.

“Not going on a date,” I say. “Griffin is driving me down to the hospital.”

Olivia flinches. I know we’re both remembering her offer to go with me not ten minutes ago.

I pull my bag out of the backseat. “Look, I know you offered to take me, but I’m sure you’ve got other things—”

“Just when I think we’re good again, you shut me out,” she says. “Just like before.”

I whip around. “Excuse me? I shut you out? Are you kidding me?”

Charlie steps in between us. “Hold on, hold on,” he says, his hands extended. “Let’s not say anything we’re going to regret.”

“Maybe we should have said something two years ago when she ran away from her family,” Olivia says to Charlie. “Maybe she wouldn’t have totally disappeared if we had this out with her back then.”

“Oh my God, are you kidding me?” I want to scream.

Several of our family members have come out onto the front porch. Nonna is halfway down the stairs.

“I never ran away from my family,” I say. “I wanted nothing more than to be with you and Charlie. And Wes. But that’s hard to do when y’all pulled away from me. You have no idea what it was like when I had to leave every Sunday, knowing you three would still have each other every day. You had other friends I didn’t know. And clubs I wasn’t a part of. And parties I wasn’t invited to. And you never really tried to make me feel like I was part of it. You think I disappeared? Y’all were the ones pushing me away.”

I’m on the verge of tears by the time I finish. I can tell they’re shocked.

Griffin is hovering close by. “Let me grab your bag for you,” he says, picking it up off the ground next to me.

“Look, I can’t do this right now. We’ll talk when I get back,” I say, moving past them.

I follow Griffin to his truck, where he stops in front of the open passenger door. Before I climb in, Laurel’s car is turning into Wes’s driveway just a few feet in front of us.

I can see his face as he looks between me and Griffin, before the car zips down his driveway and moves out of sight.

Yeah, I need to get out of here. “Let’s just go,” I say to Griffin.

Griffin walks around the front of the truck and hops in. I don’t look back as he pulls out of the drive.

We’ve only been in the truck for ten minutes, and the silence is awkward. Finally, he asks, “Want to talk about it?”

“No. Not really.”

“Are you ready to come back home now? I know how tired of your family you get when you’re stuck over there.”

I cringe, my argument with Olivia still too fresh. “Actually, it’s been good for me. I didn’t realize how much I missed them.” And Wes.

He lets out a grunt. “Yeah, looks like it’s been a great time,” he says sarcastically. “So who’s that guy that lives next door? You were in one of those pictures with him. Did y’all go on a date?”

I take a deep breath and blow it out slowly. How could I have been with Griffin for a year and never told him about one of my oldest friends?

“I grew up with him. We’ve been friends since we were little, and he’s Charlie’s best friend. And, no, I wasn’t on a date with him.”

I feel like I should know everything there is to know about Griffin, but I’m not sure what that slow nod means. I squirm in my seat, unsettled by how familiar yet strange it feels to be back in his truck.

Thankfully, he turns up the radio and a country song chases away the silence.

It’s actually one of the songs Olivia was making fun of on my last road trip.

“This song is like a Lifetime movie,” I say, hoping to lighten the mood.

He looks at me like I’ve said the dumbest thing ever. “What does that mean?”

I start to explain, but I can tell by his expression he doesn’t get it. “Never mind.”

Four songs later, we start talking about school, the only subject that feels safe and familiar.

“So I got some good news last week,” he says.

I turn to the side so I can look at him a little easier. “Oh, yeah?”

He nods. “Got an early acceptance to TCU.”

My eyes get big. “That’s huge! I didn’t even know you were applying there.” And why didn’t I know that? We’ve talked about Texas schools, but he never mentioned TCU. It’s not even on my list.

“Yeah, well, I didn’t want to say anything in case I didn’t get in.”

“So is that where you want to go?”

“If I can get the money, then yeah. That’s my first choice.”

Another ten miles pass in silence.

“What did you have planned tonight?” I ask.

He smiles. “I picked an early time so I could take you back home. I thought we could hang out at your house like you originally wanted to do this week. Just you and me. And then we could swing by the field later. Eli and them are having a bonfire tonight.”

I give him a big smile, but the more I think about it, the faster my smile disappears.

He looks from the road to me. “That is what you wanted to do this week, right? That’s what you said. I’m just trying to give you what you want.”

“That is what I said.” But why couldn’t he give it to me before?

He lets out a frustrated breath. He puts on the blinker and takes the next exit. “I need some gas.”

We pull into the station and I wander around the store, looking for snacks. Griffin joins me and we each get a drink and a bag of chips.

When I’m back in the truck, my phone buzzes in my pocket. It’s a notification that Griffin has tagged me in a post.

I glance at him, but he isn’t looking at me. I swipe open my phone and see it’s a selfie he just took of us while we were standing in the checkout line. He’s got the phone held up high and he’s looking at the camera, but I’m looking at my phone. The caption reads: Glad I can be here for my girl.

What the…Did he seriously stand two feet from me, take this, and then post it without telling me?

I wait until we’re back on the interstate before I say anything. I hold up my phone and say, “Not going to lie, this is a little weird.”

“Are you mad I posted it?” he asks.

“I don’t understand. We’re in the gas station on the way to the hospital to see my sister and niece. I’m not even looking at the camera. Why did you post it?”

His face darkens. And now I’m second-guessing his motives for driving me down.

“It’s just a picture,” Griffin says. “Don’t make this a bigger deal than it is. God, I don’t know why things can’t just be easy with you.”

“ ‘Glad I can be here for my girl’? First, I’m not your girl. We’re broken up. And second, if you were really here for me, you wouldn’t use what’s going on with my family as a stupid caption for your post.”

His hand grips the steering wheel. “This is what I was talking about with Parker. Things are always so serious with you now. You didn’t use to be like this.”

I let his words sink in. I’d thought I’d lost my family and my best friends, and I’d tried too hard to fill that gap with Griffin and the Inspiration Board and everything else that wasn’t what I really wanted. “You know what? You’re right. I didn’t use to be like this. This last week has showed me just how much of myself I lost.”

His face is incredulous. “So it’s my fault you’re boring now?”

I let out a frustrated laugh. “No. That’s on me.”

The truck goes silent, and I think we both know that after this ride, we’re done. I lean my head back against the seat, trying to figure out when my life got so twisted around. And I think about everything Olivia has said to me in the past week — about losing me, about feeling like they’d just gotten me back.

Maybe I wasn’t the only one hurting.

“This is it, isn’t it?” Griffin says eventually.

“Yeah,” I say. “It is.”

When he pulls into the hospital parking lot, he doesn’t even put the truck into park. He hits the unlock button and says, “I hope they get better.”

“Thanks for the ride,” I say, grabbing my bag.

And he’s driving off before I even get to the hospital door.

***

I make my way through the same corridors, elevators, and escalators as before, but this time I head straight to Margot’s room. I hit a waiting room on the way and stumble right into Mom, Dad, and Brad’s parents. Both of my parents jump to their feet.

“Sophie!” Mom shrieks.

“What are you doing here?” Dad yells.

But then they’re hugging the breath out of me.

“I had to come,” I say. “There’s no way Margot was going to go through this without me being here.”

They hold me for a really long time before finally letting me go. We sit down, Mom’s hand clutching mine while Dad’s arm rests on the back of my chair.

“So tell me the latest,” I say.

Mom starts. “They’re giving her the transfusion now. Brad is in there with her. It’s a really simple thing, actually, and she should almost be done. They have to get all the blood in within a four-hour period or the blood in the bag goes bad or something like that.”

“They said she’ll be at full speed within twenty-four hours,” Dad adds.

“And Anna?”

Mom smiles. “She’s doing better. They just checked her levels, and everything’s looking good.”

“Did you drive down by yourself?” Dad asks.

“Griffin drove me,” I say. Their eyebrows shoot up.

Mom looks around the room. “Well, where is he?”

“I guess he’s on the way back home. We decided on the way down that it’s really over between us.” I feel an unexpected sense of relief saying the words out loud.