Attempting to swish her hips, she entered a dive bar on the outskirts of town that stank of fried onions and stale beer. Making her sway fluid with luggage in tow was no easy task, but she’d traded in her reputation as a conservative socialite for one as a champion of the clitoris. She might as well act like it. Some sort of sex appeal through osmosis should have occurred after all her time spent around people who excelled at raising pulses. And . . . appendages. The bottom of her heel stuck to the sticky floor and she stumbled. Or not.

At seven p.m., the bar held only a smattering of customers, but the band’s website said they went on in half an hour. A small stage with a lone mic stand and a despondent-looking amp flopped facedown took up most of the back wall.

“Excuse me?” Clara caught the eye of the surly bartender. “I’m looking for Everett Bloom and the Shot of Adrenaline.”

He pointed a rag at the door down a dark hallway. “Check out back. Think he went for a smoke.”

“Thanks.” Clara wrapped her arms around herself and stepped carefully over piles of peanut shells littering the floor. Reuniting with Everett was supposed to cut through the miserable haze that had engulfed her ever since she’d left Danvers Street. Instead, she just felt numb.

“Actually.” She spun around. “May I have a shot of your finest tequila, please?” Fingers crossed that the burn of alcohol reminded her she was alive.

The bartender passed her the drink with an appreciative smile. “On the house.”

At least she knew the dress worked.

She found Everett sitting on the curb of the parking lot with a cigarette resting between two fingers. The sunset painted a starburst halo over his head.

She waited for her heart to flip over like a pancake.

It didn’t.

Almost as if she’d left the vital organ back in West Hollywood.

“Hey,” she said, trying not to cough. Not her finest opening line.

Everett swiveled and his mouth dropped. “Cee? Oh my God, kid.” Stubbing out the cigarette on the pavement, he got up and wrapped her in a bear hug. “What are you doing here?”

Brushing her hair out of her face from where he’d accidentally pushed the heavy locks into her lipstick, she aimed for nonchalant. “Thought I’d catch the show.”

“Wow.” He nodded his chin at her suitcases. “You planning on moving in?”

“Not exactly. I, ah.” It’s only embarrassing if you let it be embarrassing. “I’m on my way back to New York. This is a layover.”

“What?” His face fell. “Trip’s over already? How much trouble could you have possibly gotten into over the course of one summer?”

“You’d be surprised.” Her laugh turned into a wince.

“I can’t believe this. I can’t believe you’re here.” Everett’s eyes traced her from head to toe. “You look different.”

Clara tried not to fidget. She’d waited a long time for him to look at her with unbridled interest. So why did it make her long to wipe off her makeup and pull on sweats? Everett only ever saw her at her best. Her most polished. Josh had seen her covered in flour and raw egg, in lounge clothes that made her resemble a human potato, and in a terrible hospital nightgown—bruised and battered. Not to mention buck naked. He looked at her the same way when she was stripped to her foundation as he did when she was decked to the nines.

Everett gestured at her general form. “Did you do something different?”

She knew he meant had she dyed her hair or lost weight or bought a new shade of lipstick. But the more honest answer went beyond the way she looked.

This summer, she’d done a lot of things differently.

While on paper, she was ending the summer the same way she’d started it—unemployed, single, and in search of housing—she’d recently learned that sometimes the facts only told half of the story.

If her name had never appeared in those articles, today would have gone a lot differently. She’d seen the bottle of champagne Josh had bought weeks ago and tried to hide behind a grapefruit at the back of the fridge. In another life, they were toasting their success right now, the bubbles stinging her nose each time he made her laugh.

“You know,” she said, folding her legs to sit next to Everett on the sidewalk, “I think I might be a coward.”

He ran a hand across his head, ruffling the dark hair. “Come on.”

“I’m serious.” She could still feel the tequila hot in her throat, loosening her tongue. “I spent all those years in art school. Countless hours observing creators, their patterns and motivations, their fears, and their pain. And I never once had the guts to make something with my own name on it.” Shameless could have changed everything if she’d had the strength to claim it.

“There are worse things than being afraid,” Everett said gently. “I was always really proud of you going for your PhD. Keeping art history alive. I’d picture you in a museum somewhere, showing everyone how much smarter you are than them. The path you chose suits you.”

The future he described had always been the plan. The Guggenheim. Perfectly tailored pantsuits. A lifetime preserved in a temperature-controlled room.

“I’m more than my job.” The words came out bare. Truth without accusation. The first lesson, though not the last, that she’d learned from Josh.

Inside, she heard the band begin to tune up. The drumbeat was almost visible in the stifling Nevada heat. Why had she come here?

Up close, it was stupidly obvious that Everett was never going to want her. He was never going to look back on their friendship and wish for more. Never going to lie awake in bed wondering where he’d gone wrong. Never going to see her name in the Sunday wedding section and taste regret. Hollywood had promised her that if she loved hard enough, pined long enough, threw herself in his path, again and again, eventually, her childhood best friend would fall for her.

But real life didn’t account for free will.

It didn’t matter how many reasons she could list why Everett should love her. He didn’t. Not in the way she’d always wanted. And until she stopped waiting for a love she felt she was due, she’d never be able to imagine the future with anyone else.

Everett ran his hands down his jeans-covered calves. “I guess you’re not the girl with Popsicle-stained lips trying to dunk me in the pool anymore.”

A giggle made its way out of her mouth. Oddly painful. God. What an absolute nightmare. She’d been waiting all summer for some kind of closure. For him to say something or do something that would complete the narrative of their one-sided love affair. No wonder she couldn’t get closure from Everett. As the architect of her own suffering, Clara was the only person who could bring this emotional pilgrimage to its conclusion.

With a glance over his shoulder, he tapped his foot against the concrete, a nervous, itchy tune. “I should probably head back inside.”

As Everett got up, turning his back on her for the second time that summer, she realized she didn’t have any of her usual responses from close proximity with him. Her breathing was calm. Her face cool. The only impulse she fought was one to check her watch. At some point over the last few months, Everett’s position had shifted in her memory and her esteem, the evolution occurring so gradually she hadn’t noticed until now.

She could see why she’d once liked him. He was still handsome. Still said her name like a caress. Fourteen years of fantasy built up a lot of scar tissue. But Everett was no longer her “one that got away.” No, that title was desperately in danger of belonging to someone else.

Josh might have acted like a self-righteous idiot, but one bad day didn’t change the fact that he’d spent his summer making her feel exceptional in every way.

Everett was . . . she considered a handful of words most commonly attributed to women: flighty, ditzy, bimbo. Figures there aren’t as many readily available terms for men.

The very idea of loving Everett suddenly struck Clara as ridiculous. A wannabe rock star living off his daddy’s money who forgot to return her phone calls. She didn’t need Everett Bloom with his cleft chin and his Ray-Bans and his halfhearted apologies. What an embarrassing catalyst for her fall from grace.

It’s amazing how wrong you can be about a person. About yourself.

Clara pressed her lips together to avoid smiling. She wondered if it was hindsight or the tequila buzzing in her veins that transformed tragedy into comedy. Discarding old dreams was surprisingly liberating.

“I loved you for a really long time,” she said on an exhale, letting the truth out into the night air.

Everett froze. “Clara,” he started, but then didn’t seem particularly inclined to take the sentence further, as if her confession were an inconvenience more than anything.

Oh, for crying out loud. She’d been the one to carry a torch for fourteen years; the least he could do now was hear her say it.

He ran his thumb along his eyebrow. “You’re just saying that because we’ve known each other forever.”

She let her eyes swipe across him then and came away cool and impartial. The sky’s last traces of sunset surrendered to dusk, and in those impossible blues, Clara saw Chagall. She saw Josh when his hair fell into his eyes. Her heart, which had been screaming in her chest all day, had finally found a way to speak to her brain.