Page 446 of Call Me Baby 2: Side B

“That’s what you’re sayin’?

“We’re done?”

His brow slants up, and he lifts his head off the couch, turning into me, head cocked. “Jesus, you serious with that? Do you hear yourself? After all the shit I told you, that’s where your head goes?”

“Andrew—”

“Nah. No contract, no us, right?”

It’s all I know. He knows that.

He’s always known that.

And my heart’s got her fists

in my brain’s hair.

Let us have this, she’s sobbing.

Just let us finally fucking have this.

But my brain’s seething, bitter from the bruises it’s forced to remember⁠—

soon as she lets down her guard,

he’s going to up and leave, and you know it.

“That’s not fair,” I whisper.

“Drew, you knew how it was gonna be.”

He shakes his head slow,

the bones of a smile moving his lips.

“You know what’s real fuckin’ sad?” He laughs, breathless and dead. “One of the reasons you built this whole system was ‘cause you didn’t wanna be treated like an object. And now fuckin’ look at you. Don’t even realize you turned yourself into one.”

“I turned myself into an object,” I repeat,

mocking, dumb.

“Yeah,” he says.

“You stripped the feelings, the heart,

“the pain that comes with all of it.

“What’s left, huh?”

I want to say that that’s ridiculous.

I want to say it’s not true.

But the more I think about it,

the more I realize he’s right.

Then, in the softest voice I’ve ever heard from him, “Allison Taylor, you are my whole fuckin’ world. All that I’ve become? All that I fuckin’ do? Literally for us.”