Page 159 of Gamebreaker

A wet laugh vibrated through the phone. "Yeah, I remember."

"I just don't know which door is yours."

"Third floor," she said. "Take the stairs, the elevator's always broken. 3C. The one with the dying succulent outside it." There was a pause, then, "Cam?"

"Yeah?"

"Hurry."

I hung up and strode to the front door.

For twelve years, I'd checked the street before I left this house. Every time. Cars I didn't recognize. Anyone on the sidewalk with a phone held up. A habit so deep I didn't know I was doing it anymore.

I opened the door and walked out under the porch light, and I didn't look.

21

This Was Predictable

Harper

Here is what nobody tells you about the moment you've been waiting your entire life for: it arrives, and you have absolutely no idea what to do with your hands.

Cam was on her way to my apartment. Cam, who had just posted the most important words of her twelve-year career and then answered my call on the second ring. Cam, who had stayed on the phone while I alternated between sobbing and saying "okay" like it was a complete sentence. Cam, who had asked which door was mine in a voice that told me she was already moving.

That was twenty-five minutes ago. I'd been pacing ever since.

I wasn't performing. I didn't have it in me to build a presentable version of myself, not tonight. I'd cried my mascara off an hour before I called her, so my face was bare. My curls were flattened on one side from the couch cushion. I was wearing an oversized tee I'd owned since college and sleep shorts with a little star pattern that I had never told a single living person about, because some details are private. This was me at home with my guard down. The actual Harper DuBose, no armor, at twelve-something in the morning, waiting for the woman who had just changed my life with one post.

My satin bonnet was sitting on the arm of the couch where I'd ripped it off the second she said I love you. I'd looked at it twice since then and decided I was not answering the door in it. Some dignities are sacred.

I checked her post again. It was still exploding. The comment count climbed so fast that the number kept stuttering on my screen. I'd read the last line about forty times since it went up.

To the person who taught me that living honestly is worth everything: You were right. I'm sorry it took me so long to be brave enough. I love you.

I put my phone face down on the cushion.

I picked it back up.

I put it down again.

"You are not going to read it a forty-first time," I informed myself. "You're a grown woman with dignity. You have restraint. You have..." I picked it up and read it again, "…absolutely no impulse control whatsoever."

The string lights were on. I'd turned them on after we hung up, because my hands needed a job and string lights were less chaotic than my other options, like texting Mia at one in the morning or reorganizing my bookshelves by emotional significance. My apartment looked like my actual life, in the best and worst way. The throw blanket was balled up at one end of the couch where I'd spent the last two hours reading and rereading a post I'd been terrified would never exist. A mug of tea I'd made and forgotten sat cold on the coffee table. The orange dress was still draped over the back of the armchair where I'd thrown it a week ago, when I'd come home from Laine's and decided I was going to get over Cam Russo if it killed me. I'd never hung it back up.

The apartment was exactly the same as it had been this morning.

I was not the same woman who'd lived here three weeks ago.

The knock came at 12:52 AM.

I know because I was watching the clock. Not compulsively. Okay, fine. Compulsively.

I crossed the room, put my hand on the knob, and stopped.

Three weeks ago, I'd stood on the other side of a different door with my hand on a different knob, and I'd walked out. I'd told her not to walk me out. I'd climbed into a car with her teeth marks on my neck and driven away, and I had not looked back, because if I'd looked back I would have stayed, and staying would have cost me everything I'd spent twenty-six years fighting to become.

I opened the door.