Eli’s eyes shone with understanding, but I wasn’t done. For someone who never, ever talked about this, it was disconcerting how many words I had.

“Again, this wasn’t all the time. We’d go entire weeks with casseroles for dinner and milk in the fridge and cereal in the cupboard. But then Mom would quit, or lose her job, or break up with a boyfriend, and there would be stretches of nothing, where Vince and I had to ration stale crackers. And because it was all so fucking unpredictable, it was hard to enjoy the good times. They could end any second, so we were constantly on the edges of our seats.

“I developed certain . . . strategies. I’d steal a few dollars as an emergency fund. Sometimes from Mom’s purse. Other times from other places. I was a very opportunistic thief.” I let out a laugh. “Vince and I got into the habit of eating as quickly as possible. We were afraid to be discovered, or that Mom would come and ask where we’d gotten the food from, or that she’d take it from us. Eating at home was a constant source of anxiety. And naturally, everything we ate was very cheap and poor quality. We didn’t have fresh vegetables at our disposal. The little money we had, we’d use to buy stuff that would keep. I’d go to Tisha’s house and there were these big bowls overflowing with fruit, and it seemed like being in a Disney movie. Princess stuff, you know? The apotheosis of luxury.”

There, I’d learned that food was more than just calories and nutrition. Food was what brought the Fuli family together every night, what the parents of figure skaters made for their kids after a hard practice, what people talked about when they came back from weekends spent in quaint coastal bed-and-breakfasts. Food was collagen, the connective tissue of our society, and if I hadn’t grown up with enough of it, well. Clearly, it had to mean that I wasn’t tethered enough to anyone, and never could be.

“You said that you left for college and never came back, and, Eli, I did the same. Alec and the figure skating program—I owe him everything. Thanks to him I got my tuition waived. I jumped on a plane, left for the dorms on the earliest possible move-in date, and didn’t come back for two years. I just couldn’t. I was on the college meal plan, which meant I could eat plenty, but I still had so much anxiety around food. It was triggered by the weirdest shit—having to eat in a rush, small portions, the cafeterias being closed for Thanksgiving. It was irrational, but—”

“It wasn’t,” he interrupted gently.

I glanced away. “Either way, I wasn’t functioning. So I looked around. A campus therapist helped me find coping strategies, but . . . I was healing, and I just couldn’t force myself to go back home.” I swallowed. “You went back for Maya, Eli. But I . . . I was eighteen, and Vince was fifteen, and I left him. I left him alone with Mom for years.” The burning pressure behind my eyes threatened to overflow, and I had no wish to fight it. Instead, I remembered a summer night, when I was thirteen. A sleepover at Tisha’s. The following day Mrs. Fuli had sent me home with leftovers—pasta with chicken, a side of grilled zucchini, and a fruit salad, all fresh and delicious. When I’d returned home, Mom was gone and Vince was sitting on the couch, listening to the news on a TV that had only three channels. His eyes had widened in sheer joy at the sight of the Tupperware containers in my hands, and watching his delight as he worked his way through the food had made me happier than I’d been in a long, long time.

Being able to keep Vince fed, that had been happiness. And when I couldn’t, that’s when I’d begun to resent him, and the unfairness of what was being asked of me.

“I did go back, eventually. And Vince . . . he said he forgave me. But things soured anyway. He grew up and made choices that I simply can’t . . . We’ve been on and off through the years. His current behavior is completely unacceptable, but I hope you can see why me calling the police on him is not really a—”

Two things happened simultaneously: my voice broke, and Eli dragged me into his lap, between his thighs, his arms bands of steel around me. Tears slid down my cheeks, and I hated it a little, this weakness of mine, this inability to deal with my past and with my infinite guilt. But it was nice, having told someone. Taking this stinging pain inside me and putting it outside my body for a little. “You did what you could.” His hand caressed my hair, my back.

“You did enough.”

“Did I?” I pulled back and wiped my cheeks. “Because look at us.” He stared in confusion, his palm warm around my nape. “My story and yours had the same beginnings. Our siblings. The ice. Engineering. But the ending . . . You and Maya found each other, while Vince and I—it’s like one of those Finish the Picture worksheets. Except that yours became a beautiful painting and mine is a fucking—”

“Rue, no.” He shook his head energetically, like I shouldn’t even contemplate the idea. “Maya wanted to be found. Mending that relationship went both ways. This,” he said, angling his head toward the entrance of my apartment, “is not on you. Please, tell me you understand that.”

Maybe I did, at least rationally. But I wasn’t able to feel it in my stomach. I let out a soft, viscous laugh. “Do you think that maybe there’s another version of us, somewhere in another timeline? Where we’re not just a messed-up lump of scar tissue, and we’re whole enough to be capable of loving others the way they want to be loved?”

He stared at me for an endless moment, and a silly thought nestled into my mind. If I were able to love someone, I would choose you. In that timeline, I would want it to be you.

But then he said, “No, Rue.”

“Well, that’s depressing.”

“That’s not it.” He swallowed. Held my eyes with determination. “I just don’t think that we need another timeline to be able to do that.”

It knocked me wordless. My heart stopped so abruptly, I was afraid it wasn’t going to start anymore. “I’m done. You can leave now, if you want to,” I said evenly. I couldn’t believe he’d want otherwise—in my experience, staying was the exception, and leaving, the rule. I hated the thought of him being gone, but maybe it was for the best, to untangle us from this intimacy we’d sunk into.

“Can I?”

I nodded. “I promise I’m fine. I don’t need you to keep hugging me, or—”

“I’m not hugging you.”

“Yes, you—”

“No, here’s what’s happening.” He shifted us around until we were lying down, not unlike the way we’d fallen asleep earlier. Except that he was definitely hugging me, pulling me into his chest and holding me there. Whenever I breathed in, his clean scent filled my lungs. “I’m waiting for you to calm down. Once you’re not upset anymore, we can fool around again. Then I’ll go home. Okay?”

“Okay,” I said. It sounded like a good, not overdramatic plan. And despite the night’s events, I was, above all, not overdramatic.

“Perfect. Just close your eyes and relax, okay? The sooner you relax, the sooner we can do something fun.”

“Like what?”

“We could fuck again—that worked well. Or maybe you can suck me off. I’ll think about it.”

I took a deep breath and willed myself to calm down. It was going to be good, moving back to the sex. Something I was familiar with. Something I could control.

But I relaxed a little too much, and ended up falling into an exhausted, dreamless sleep in under a minute. We did not fuck, and I did not suck him off, and he did not go home.

Instead, Eli’s arms stayed around me for the rest of the night.

29

EVEN IF YOU DON’T