“Please.” I shook her shoulders, crying out all of a sudden. Her eyes bulged in surprise. They asked, what the fuck?

Mine answered, just go with it.

“Poppy, I know you dumped me, but I need a redo. I will do anything for a redo, babe.”

So many emotions passed over her face, I thought she was going to faint.

She probably wondered why I was doing this. I wondered the same thing. Maybe I’d realized during Mom’s funeral how loved she was, and I didn’t want to leave this world unexpectedly one day, knowing so many people thought I was a world-class cunt. And to some, maybe I had been—certainly not on purpose, but it wasn’t like that mattered to them.

“No!” Poppy cried overdramatically, and I wished I could tell her to take it down a notch or two. She flung her arms in the air. “I will not! I will never give you another chance, Knight Cole. I’m in love with another.”

In love with another? Who the fuck was she, Billy Shakespeare? Who talked like that? Oh, that’s right. Poppy. Poppy talked like that. She knew how to play the accordion, for fuck’s sake. She probably knew Latin and how to tie a corset properly, too. I almost smiled at that. Almost. Instead, I shook my head.

“Who’s the douchebag?”

“I shan’t say!”

Shan’t? Shan’t? I was vaguely aware of the fact that people were beginning to swarm around us, taking their phones out to record. I didn’t mind an audience. I lived for it from Friday to Friday during football season. I just hoped to shit I could explain it to Luna if it ever leaked.

But deep down, I knew I wouldn’t need to do any explaining. It was obvious she had whatever was left of my heart. I could never be anyone else’s.

“Dude, I think she’s, like, expecting you to challenge him to a duel or something. Bitch is cray,” someone called out from a top stair.

I twisted my head and flashed him a murderous stare.

“Mind your business.”

“Sorry.”

I turned back to Poppy.

“I’m going to try to move on, but Pops, dude, I swear on everything holy, it’s gonna be hard.” I then looked around and threw my arms in the air. “Anyone need a fucking bucket of popcorn? Get the hell outta here!”

The speed with which people scurried to their cars and back into classrooms actually would have made me laugh if it wasn’t for the fact that I was newly orphaned.

Three minutes after, Poppy and I were alone in the parking lot.

I opened the door of her Mini Cooper for her. She smiled through her tears. I hated seeing people crying for me. Glass half full: she was no longer crying because of me. So there was that.

“You’re going to make Luna really, really happy,” she said.

“Yeah?” I had the audacity to ask her, mainly because I felt guilty about talking about Luna with anyone else.

Poppy nodded. “You truly are a knight.”

“That’s punny.”

“It’s true, too.”

“Thank you, Sunshine.” I kissed the top of her head. “P.S. soccer is soccer and football is football. Not the same shit. Okay. Bye.”

One by one, I crossed shit off my mental to-do list to accommodate the new situation, in which Mom wasn’t alive.

Movie nights on Friday.

Family sushi each Saturday.

Our weekly what’s-going-on-with-your-college-application argument.

Hushed gossip about Lev and Bailey.

I’d been working hard at it, perfecting the art of letting go. But I still fucked up sometimes. And those times…they hurt like a bitch. Like the time I’d casually strolled into Mom’s room, expecting to find her in her throne of pillows and duvets, looking for some feminine advice.

I’d found her bed empty—don’t look so surprised, idiot—and even though it was hardly news that she was no longer with us, I still allowed myself a nice forty-minute breakdown, consisting of punching everything in sight, ripping one section of the wallpaper, floor-to-ceiling, then proceeding to crack the TV from its base, seeing as I wasn’t going to watch any more movies in this room.

But I didn’t drink. I didn’t drink a drop.

Even when my bullshit, Prius-driving, preppy-looking counselor, Chris, tried to “dig deep” and help me “find my way to mindfulness”—practically throwing me back at the hard stuff—I stayed true to my promise to Mom. To Luna. Most of all, to myself.

What now? I’d finished things with Poppy—finally—but I needed a plan.

There was no way I was going to approach Luna before I knew exactly what to say to her, and in order to know what that was, I required a woman’s perspective—preferably, a sane, knowledgeable one. Problem was, Daria was a mini-Lucifer, and I trusted her slightly little less than I trusted a bag of fucking rocks. Let me rephrase: at least I could use a bag of rocks as a trustworthy weapon. Daria was uselessly evil, and at the bottom of the talk-to list.

Same went for all the girls I knew from school. They had hidden agendas. Either they hated me for my lack of interest in them or liked me enough to try to sabotage my efforts to get back with Luna.

I could talk to Edie, Mel, or Aunt Emilia, but the truth was, I’d been meaning to give Dixie the time of day to thank her for, oh, I don’t know, saving my life, and so I’d agreed to meet her one more time on that bench in front of the ocean where I’d originally told her to piss off.

Only now, I was privy to some information I hadn’t been aware of when I’d suggested she find her way back to Texas:

Dixie cared enough about me to stay here, even when I hadn’t wanted her to. She’d saved my life when everyone else was too busy hating me or being disgusted with my sorry, alcoholic ass. She never judged, even though I’d made no efforts not to judge her.

I needed a female perspective to help me with Luna, and Dixie was, indeed, a woman. An intelligent one, I was beginning to find out.

Dixie had told me she had a one-way ticket back to Dallas, and it somehow felt like losing two moms in the span of a week. I cut myself some slack for feeling that way, since my head was all over the place, but it didn’t make the loss of her any less real.

Dixie was already waiting for me on the bench, hands in her lap, a timid smile on her face. I was fifteen minutes early, yet somehow it didn’t surprise me that she’d been waiting here. Dixie was always three steps ahead, and forever at my disposal since she came to Todos Santos.

Maybe that’s why hating her was so pointless. It got old fast. Mom was gone now, and my entire range of emotions was directed toward either mourning her loss or putting a plan together to get Luna back. Dixie was no longer a threat, because I wasn’t worried Mom would somehow find out about her and feel replaced.

Dixie handed me a purple and blue slushie. Berries and grapes. My favorite, though we’d never discussed slushies, so my guess was it was one of the many things she’d found out by stalking my ass.

“Thanks.” I took a big slurp, squinting at the sunset. She curled a strand of my tousled hair behind my ear in response.

“How are you holding up?”

Great. Small talk. Exactly what I needed. That, and a hot bleach treatment for my anus.

“Fine.” Everyone’s favorite word.