Miles ducks his head to peer into my eyes, a funny grin quirking his mouth. “Do you want to get into the car and listen to Adele?”

I laugh, wipe my damp eyes with the back of my forearm. “No, we already agreed: that won’t do any good. Might as well just see this beach. Assuming there is a beach, and you’re not just walking me off a cliff.”

“Would you want me to tell you,” he asks dryly, “or would that ruin the surprise?”

“I hate surprises.”

He cracks a smile. “There’s a beach.”

We fall back into step. The earth goes sandy as we climb. The trees thin, until suddenly we reach the crest and we’re overlooking the steep slope of a dune. At its foot, the dark lake rolls in on the sand, and across the expanse of beach, several bonfires blaze in the dark, several tents ringed around the most distant.

The whoosh and scrape of the tide against the shore dulls the voices and laughter of the other nighttime beachgoers, and it’s easy to imagine that this random group of people might be the last on earth. Station Eleven–style nomads. Or maybe that we’re on a different planet entirely, strangers in a strange land.

“Wow,” I whisper.

“Second-best beach in town,” he murmurs.

“Second best?” I turn. “You brought me to your runner-up beach?”

“No one knows about the other one,” he jokes. “I can’t just open the floodgates.”

“Who am I going to tell?” I wave my arms out to my sides. “Everyone I know is either here, my mortal enemy, or a close friend or relative of a mortal enemy.”

“Yeah, but your mortal enemy just cut you loose.” He gently pushes my shoulder. “Who’s to say I take you to Secret Beach today, and you don’t bring that wheatgrass-loving asshole there next week?”

I shake my head. “I don’t get back with exes. When someone proves who they are, that’s it.”

He studies me, head cocked to one side.

“What?” I say. “You disagree?”

“I’ve only had one other ex,” he says. “We didn’t get back together, but I’m not sure that’s a personal stance.”

“One ex?” I look back at him. “How old are you?”

“I’m not a huge relationship guy,” he says, a little bashful. “Petra was the exception, not the rule, for me. So if she wanted to get back together? I don’t know. But it’s not worth thinking about, since she’s engaged to your ex-boyfriend.”

My stomach tightens. I turn and focus on the moonlight playing across the waves, listen to the crash and roar. “Seems louder than it does during the day.”

“I’ve always loved that.” He tips his head for me to follow him, and we make our way down the dune and to the left, out of the path of any foot traffic that may come up behind us. Then we sit and twist our cups into the sand. Miles pulls the checkered paper fry trays out and sets them atop the flattened bag.

I catch him watching me as I take my first bite. “What,” I say, mouth full.

One shoulder lifts in tandem with the corner of his mouth. “Just waiting to see if you moan again.”

My face heats as I bite into a jalapeño. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The sound you made when you tried the milkshake,” he says. “I want to know if the fries live up to that.”

“Honestly,” I say, “my mouth is on fire right now.”

He grabs my milkshake and lifts it toward me. I lean over the straw and take a slurp. “Better?” he asks.

My teeth start chattering.

He laughs and unzips his sweatshirt, taking it off and tossing it in my direction. Less to me than at me.

“Thanks,” I say, pulling it off my face and then wrapping it around my shoulders and bare back. The smell of the woodsmoke from the winery’s fireplace engulfs me. “Now I know where your smell comes from.”

He balks. “I smell?”

“No,” I say. “I mean, I thought you smelled kind of like gingersnaps. But you just smell like the winery. It’s nice.”

He leans into me to inhale against the fabric on my shoulder. “Guess I’m too used to it to notice.”

“I mean, a lot of times, it’s hiding under the smell of weed,” I say.

He looks at me askance, teasing. “Is that judgment, Daphne?”

“Merely an observation,” I say.

He leans back against the sand, propped up on his forearms. “I’ve been going a little harder than usual.” He eyes me through his lashes. “Not sure if you’ve heard, but I got dumped.”

“Sounds vaguely familiar,” I concede.

“I’m cutting back,” he says.

At that precise moment, I bury my hands in the sweatshirt pockets and am met with a prerolled joint. I pull it out with a laugh.

“I’ve been looking for that.” Miles plucks the joint from my fingers and pops it between his lips. “You gotta light.”

“Sadly, no,” I say.

“No, I mean, you’ve got a light,” he says. “Other pocket.”

“Ah.” I withdraw the neon-orange plastic lighter and snap it open, blocking the wind until the flame catches. He leans in so I can light the end of the tiny joint. He takes a puff, then holds it out to me.

I hesitate, and his mouth splits into a wide smile. “Whatever those D.A.R.E. officers might have told you, I’m not going to force you. It’s just an offer.”

As a devoted fan of control, I never had a big weed phase, but annoyingly the voice in my head reminding me of that isn’t my own; it’s Peter’s. And I don’t want it there. It has no right to keep echoing through my skull.

For three years I’ve been eating like him, exercising like him, working tirelessly to befriend his friends and impress his family, going to his favorite breweries, and all along I thought it was my idea, my life. Only now, without him in the picture, absolutely none of the rest of the picture makes sense.

I’m not sure what parts of me are him and which parts are genuinely my own. And I want to know. I want to know myself, to test my edges and see where I stop and the rest of the world begins.

So I pluck the joint from between Miles’s finger and thumb, and take a hefty pull on it, feeling the sensation spiral through me. When I pass it back to him, he takes one more hit, then stubs it out.

“Does this place have a name?” I ask.

Down by the nearest bonfire, a group in their late teens or early twenties are clinking their beer bottles and cans of hard seltzer together, howling up at the moon.

“I don’t know,” he says, “I’ve only ever heard people call it the spot.”

“The spot,” I say, “sounds exactly like where high schoolers come to smoke weed.”

“True,” he says, “but I haven’t had any luck yet tracking down the stretch of beach where thirtysomethings go to smoke weed.”

“Oh, they’re all just vaping from their beds while watching HGTV.”

“Not us,” he says.

“No, we’re adventurous,” I say.

“Okay, tell me something, Daphne.” He tips his face toward the stars.

I lean back on my forearms. “What?”

He looks over, the left half of his face shadowed. “Where do you go when you’re not at home?”

“Like, other than work?”

“Other than work.” He nods. “Because despite your impressive commitment to the calendar, there actually are slots of time when you’re unaccounted for, but I never see you out. And you’d never been to Cherry Hill, or MEATLOCKER, or here. So where do you go?”

“Nowhere,” I say. “I’m boring.”

“You’re not boring,” he says. “You’re keeping secrets.”

What Ashleigh said comes back to me: a closed book.

There was a time when I was okay at making friends. But that was probably four or five relocations back. Eventually, it didn’t seem worth it anymore, cracking myself open to let someone in, only to have them violently extracted months later when Mom got transferred again.

“Honestly,” I say, “if I’m not at home or work, I’m usually just reading somewhere else. The beach—the public beach—or the Lone Horse Café on Mortimer Avenue. And if I’m not reading, I’m probably working on some program or another. Lots of trips to Meijer and Dollar Tree.”