“Isn’t this supposed to get easier?” Aunt Glory demands.

“Wimps,” Nana says.

Mom lifts up on her elbows and glares at Nana, who pulled something in her groin—do not ask—and came to supervise instead of participate today. “Go walk the plank, Nana.”

It’s so normal.

Except nothing’s normal anymore.

Everything’s a little hollow. It’s harder to make myself come to senior aerobics. It’s harder to smile at customers at Crusty Nut. I don’t want to paint.

Even coffee is dull.

This is nothing like breaking up with Ben.

That was my injured pride and my fear that I’d be alone.

Being without Max?

It’s like someone borrowed part of my soul and is holding it for a ransom I can’t pay.

I can’t make Max love me.

And I can’t pretend I didn’t fall in love with him.

“Same time next week?” I push myself up onto my hands and knees, then onto my rubbery legs while the class around me does the same.

“Tillie Jean, I need to talk to you about the twins,” Dita says. She’s still bent over huffing and puffing. “Can you paint them for their birthday?”

“Like face painting, or like paint their portraits?” Mom asks.

“You should do both,” Nana declares. “Portraits of kids with their faces painted.”

“Talk later,” I tell Dita with a nod. “Alone. No help. Peanut gallery.”

She gives me a thumbs up.

I head home to shower, ignoring the empty house next door. Max sent someone to pack up the rest of his stuff, and according to Uncle Homer’s daughter, the house is rented out off-and-on to vacationers starting in mid-March, and then she’s thinking of selling it permanently.

And then there’s no chance Max will ever come back to that little house.

I press through one more quick shower that doesn’t get the lingering glitter out of my hair or off my eyelids.

My bedroom is back to normal. Mostly. True to his word, Cooper had a replacement bed delivered the next day and brought in a forensic clean-up crew to tackle the glitter.

But it’s still glitter.

And I still catch glimpses of it in the cracks between the slats of the wood floor, or on the blinds, or twinkling in the curtains around my bed.

And every time, all I can see is Max’s face.

Horrified.

Angry.

Ready to slay dragons.

And then Max ready to slay me the next day.

I rush through getting dressed and head to Crusty Nut. It needs a makeover—brighter colors, happier music, mood-boosting anything—but I want someone else to do the work.

Not me.

“Morning, hon.” Dad waves at me with a spatula when I slip in the back door. “Your mom says I should put pickle juice in your coffee this morning. Made ’em all work hard at aerobics, eh?”

I lift my glittery coffee tumbler that doesn’t make me smile like it used to. “Nice try. Already brought my own.”

“I figured. But maybe don’t get a refill from Muted Parrot today if you want it to be drinkable? And maybe go lighter on the Zumba next week?”

I put on my apron and head for the bar. “Only until Nana’s fully back. Then it’s game on.”

“Good plan.”

I start to head to the bar, but pause. “Dad?”

“Yeah, hon?”

I start to open my mouth, to put voice to the words that have been tumbling in the back of my head, but it’s terrifying.

I thought I was ready. I thought I’d be brave when the time came. I thought I could do this.

So why do half a dozen little words feel so heavy?

“Tillie Jean?”

“I think it’s time I quit,” I whisper.

Rip off the bandaid, right?

He blinks slowly, then nods even slower. “You know what you want to do?”

What I want to do?

Yes.

Yes, I know exactly what I want to do. It came to me in a blinding flash that felt so undeniably right that there was no question this is the direction I’m supposed to go.

But only half of it is in my control. “Yes.”

I don’t elaborate.

He doesn’t ask.

“Okay.” He wipes his hands on his apron, a familiar gesture that makes my chest ache for knowing it’s not a sight I’ll have dozens of times a day every day for the rest of my life, but I’m not going far.

And possibly not for a while.

But I will go.

Max pushing me to try new things? To be better? To open my world wider?

Every step I’ve taken the past four years, every shift I’ve made, they’ve all been here.

At home.

And this is where I belong.

It’s where I’ll belong until my dying day.

But not as the manager at Crusty Nut. And not every day for the next couple years while I go back to school.

It’s where I’ll return though.

And when I come back—

When I come back, I’ll take everything I’ve learned here, at school, from Max, from the world I’m about to experience, and I’m running for mayor.

Shipwreck has only just begun growing and expanding.

I want to make sure we stay true to our roots while welcoming the wide world in to join us.

“Are you quitting today?” His voice is thick, and it makes my eyes burn and my sinuses threaten to drip, but I shake my head.

“No. Not today. Soon, but not today.”

He smiles. “Well, good, because your mother’s in no shape to come over and help take care of all of those customers out there.”

I swipe my eyes quickly, nod, and reverse course, passing through the kitchen door and out behind the bar to check on the breakfast crowd when the lone customer sitting at the bar makes me drop my coffee.

He leaps to his feet. “Shit. Sorry. I’ll buy you a new one. I’ll—”

“What are you doing here?”

I’m shrieking.

Max is sitting at the bar when he’s supposed to be in Florida and I just told my dad the hardest thing I’ve ever told anyone and my feet are coated in hot coffee and I’m shrieking.

He freezes, his hair still as glittery as mine is, but his eyes—oh, god, I can’t look at his eyes.

“You’re right,” he says quietly. “I’m afraid. No, not afraid. Terrified. I’m terrified that if I let you all the way in, you’ll realize I’m not worth it, and you’ll walk away, and I’ll never be able to put myself back together again.”

This isn’t what he’s supposed to say.

He’s supposed to not be here at all, so I can get over him and not fall back into the same on-again, off-again pattern with him that I had with Ben.

Except this doesn’t feel off-again, on-again.

“You hurt me,” I whisper.

He flinches. “I know. I’m sorry.”

I don’t hear my dad join me from the kitchen, but I know he’s there. The door to Crusty Nut opens, and my mom and Nana and Aunt Bea and Aunt Glory and Annika and Sloane and Georgia and Grady all pile in.

What do I want to do?

I want to leap over the bar and kiss his face and hold on so tight that he can’t ever shake me away again and tell my family to go easy on him. He looks every bit as miserable as I am.