Chapter One

THEA

SOMERVILLE, 2014

There was, and had always been, a curse.

This relationship was just another casualty of it. I knew that, I had felt it for weeks. Our time was running it out, as it always did. And here we were, sitting on the couch, a blackberry pie we’d just baked together cooling in the kitchen.

My boyfriend Will sat next to me, tears streaming down his face while he waffled between anger and sorrow. I’d stopped listening to his disorganized rambling. Instead I tried to memorize the pores on his nose, the stray hairs…