CHAPTER TWELVE
I got a text from Conroy two days after our Portsmouth field trip.
On my way out. Austin, here I come! See you in paradise.
Austin? s**t! I’d forgotten he was leaving in July. And was this all I’d get by way of goodbye?
But I didn’t need to ask that question. I couldn’t pretend to be surprised. If I’d been hoping that seeing more of Conroy after school had ended meant he was changing the way he felt, I’d have been an i***t. Everything he’d said, every way he’d acted toward me had supported his rolling-stone persona. It was all he had to give. Or all he was willing to give. And this text was a seal on that message.
I felt like I’d been left in the dust, even though I didn’t really think Conroy saw it like that. He’d been clear to me. I hadn’t been honest with him. That m
