Elizabeth Morgan

I don’t know what it is, but I feel it in my bones.

People pleasers have some kind of genetic makeup deep in the marrow of their bones that just knows when something is off.

He’s . . . sweet when it’s just us, when he doesn’t have his fraternity brothers and finance bros to impress.

And as I stare at it, my eyes and nose and head and soul throbbing,

The words weigh on my soul, the idea filling me with a heavy panic I don’t know how to escape from.

I need to be clean, to scrub this day off my skin until there’s a fresh layer Bradley has never touched, a new version of me who will be able to stand strong and tall beneath this disappointment, but until then, I need to clean this room.

I thought that was just what you did when you were in love.

I did everything for him and it wasn’t enough.

I gave up huge chunks of myself—my time, my ambition, my . . . personality, even—and it wasn’t enough to make him love me, not really.

What does that say about me?

Me, a person who so very profoundly wants to be accepted, wants others to like her and view her as valuable, wasn’t enough when I gave someone my all.

What does that mean?

My best friend breaks into my mild mental breakdown.

“You do everything for everyone, Liv. That’s your problem—you put everyone else first at the expense of yourself,” Cici says, a hand on my shoulder. “Maybe this is a sign to take care of Olivia.”