I had conscientiously typed out a paragraph I figured I could read out loud. How hard was reading, after all? Though as I watched the other honorees come up and read their prepared remarks, I started to think it must be harder than I remembered. They stumbled, mumbled, lost their place, and tripped on simple words over and over. I found myself wishing I’d practiced in advance.

Because I was the youngest-ever honoree for my award, and a female, of all things, and because this was the most prestigious award the department gave, and because the School Bus Angel was all over the news, they’d saved my award for last. I was the grand finale of the night. The mayor himself was going to come out, hand me the award, and bask with me in the glory.

I counted down as all the others walked up and then back to their places, my chest feeling tighter and tighter with nervousness.

Finally, it was my turn. Almost done. I just had to get through the next five minutes, and I could go home to my plants and my smooth sheets and my quiet, locked apartment.

“Folks, we’ve saved the best for last,” the emcee said, as the guys from my shift all started whooping and drumming on the table. “Our final honoree is the top of the top, and to present this last award, we’ve got a very special treat. A VIP is joining us tonight. We had hoped to have the mayor with us, but even though he got called away at the last minute on city business, never fear! We’ve got the next best thing! It’s now my pleasure to cede the podium to Austin’s very own homegrown city councilman—”

The emcee turned to gesture toward the side of the stage, and in that second’s pause, I heard myself say, “Oh, shit.”

Not the mayor.

This was bad.

Because I just knew—somehow—the name he was about to say next. I felt it coming.

And I was right.

“Heath Thompson!” the emcee called then, in a loud Price Is Right announcer’s voice as if some lucky audience member had just won a new washer-dryer.

And then it was like everything downshifted into slo-mo. The sounds of the words got deep and syrupy, and the clapping started to sound like five hundred people beating on snare drums, and I watched in disbelief as the guy himself, Heath fucking Thompson, walked out from stage left to join the emcee there.

Actually, strutted was more like it.

I’d know that strut anywhere: The utterly infuriating gait of a man who fully believed the world would always let him have anything and everything he ever wanted—and had never once been told any different.

Should I have seen it coming? Should I have known better than to dare to want something for myself? Should I have assumed from the start that life would find a way to ruin this moment?

Because I didn’t. I hadn’t. I was so gobsmacked to see Heath Thompson step onto that stage that I forgot to breathe. Entirely. Until Hernandez saw me frozen there and slapped me on the back.

Then, everything I knew blurred into one tiny pinprick of comprehension: At the proudest moment of my entire life, one that was supposed to honor everything I had worked so hard to achieve and become, I was going to have to receive my award from Heath Thompson.

Heath. Thompson.

The only person in the world who could ruin it.

Two

AS HE TOOK the stage—commanded it, really—the roar of the crowd mutated in my head into a howly, wind-on-the-moors sound that drowned everything else out.

The change in sound was so real, I wondered at first if something had gone wonky with the sound system. I looked around, but nobody else looked disturbed. Nobody else looked like something crazy—something impossibly insane—was happening before their eyes.

Everybody else was fine.

That’s when I decided it had to be a nightmare. There was no way this moment was actually happening. As I embraced that idea, the weird howl in the room became comforting proof that I must be fast asleep, tucked in bed, making it all up in my head. As usual.

I wasn’t really here in a hotel ballroom at the proudest moment of my life, about to receive Austin FD’s highest service award—from Heath Thompson.

Life couldn’t possibly be that unfair.

But there he was. Still. Talking into the microphone, up onstage, in the lights, like reality was his birthright. I blinked again, as if I could clear my eyes. He was a thousand miles away. My eardrums started to throb, and then, just as I heard his distant, almost unintelligible voice call my name, or thought I did, I felt nausea welling up through my torso—from my stomach to my rib cage to my collarbones to my throat—

Hernandez poked me on the shoulder.

I turned to him and, in slo-mo, he pointed at the stage and waved me toward it.

I looked around. Every face in the room was trained on me. Smiling. Clapping. Cheering. The guys on my shift stood up for a standing O, and the rest of the room followed. My next move was clear. I’d won an award, and now all I had to do was one simple thing: Walk up to the stage and take it.

I swallowed, and stood. Mind over matter. Just stand, walk, take plaque. Simple. Simple. I swallowed again, then stood, cursing those ridiculous pumps, and moved through the crowd, winding past the tables like a blinking fish through a coral reef.

Somewhere between my seat and the stage, I dropped my prepared remarks. I felt them flutter from my fingers, but it was like it had happened to somebody else. Oh well, I thought. No speech, then. Least of my worries.

There was a step at the stage. Then another, then another. My ankles wobbled on those dumb heels. Then I was approaching the podium, my stomach feeling heavy inside my torso, like a water balloon tied to my rib cage.

I wouldn’t look at him, that’s all. Or touch him. And I wouldn’t stop moving. I’d keep in motion like a shark, and I’d keep my eyes averted at all costs. Get in, get out. Don’t stop. Don’t look back. Pretend it’s not happening.

Just take it and go. Take it and get to the back of the stage. I coached myself through this the way I’d coached myself through every other hard thing in my life. The way I’d add just one more mile to a ten-mile run, or one more set of reps in the gym. I’d navigated a collapsing staircase. I’d held a dying man’s skull together. I’d jumped from a collapsing roof. I could do this.

I stopped in front of the podium, eyes fixed on the plaque itself, trying to mentally Photoshop the person holding it out of the frame.

Was I actually going to have to shake Heath Thompson’s hand?

No. No way.

I could make myself do a lot of things, but I wouldn’t make myself do that.

I saw the plaque come my direction in slo-mo and clasped my fingers around it, trying to ground myself by focusing on how solid and heavy it was. What wood was that? Oak? Walnut? It weighed a ton.

Take plaque, move away. But before I could, Heath Thompson—Heath Thompson—grabbed my free hand. To shake. The way every other presenter had done for every other recipient.

Except he wasn’t every other presenter, and I sure as hell wasn’t every other recipient.

Heath Thompson had made sure of that.

The shock of his touch was like a burn from an electrical wire—sharp and mean and fast. It registered as pain somehow, and then, in response, on instinct, I looked up into his face.

There he was. Older and beefier and more hair-sprayed than he had been ten years ago, and wearing a smug city-councilman expression, as if the entire world existed for him to grandstand in.