I sigh. “Great synopsis of my life.”

“Thank you. If you ever need a biographer . . .” She pours Cocoa Puffs into the milk, like the nonsensical creature she is. “Where are you guys going?”

“Dinner with his friends. He has this really active social circle that makes me look back to that summer when my best friend was a watermelon with googly eyes and feel absolutely devastated.”

“In third grade?”

“High school.”

“Ouch. Well, you have me now. Ready to call law enforcement if you’re not back by eight thirty. May I? I’ve always wanted to report a missing person.” She holds the spoon like a phone. “No, Officer, she didn’t have enemies, but she was part of a weird sectarian conflict that only someone with a doctorate in physics could fully grasp. Last seen cavorting with a big dude in a Saint Patrick’s Day Porta Potty. Yes, I’ll hold.”

I laugh. “Do text me before you call Liam Neeson. And I might be later than that, but I’m not spending the night.”

“Ever?”

“Ever.”

She gasps. The spoon clatters. “Are you not letting him smack the salmon because of the article he wrote? Is his seventeen-year-old self cockblocking him from the past?”

I frown—at her usage of salmon and at the reminder that why, yes, the guy I’m going out with did do that. And it’s not that I ever forget. It’s just that I truly cannot reconcile it—the way Jack is when we’re together, kind and funny and even admiring of my work, and the fact that fifteen years ago—

“Elsie? Is that it?”

“No. No, he’s just . . . not planning on having sex with me.”

Her eyes widen. “Are you planning on having sex with him?”

Maybe. Probably. No. Should I? I want to. I’m scared. Maybe. “I have to go.” I chew on the inside of my cheek and pick up my purse. Then stop at the door when Cece says, “Hey, Elsie?”

I turn around.

“You look pretty tonight.” Her big eyes are warm. “Even more than usual.”

I smile. I think I look medium as usual, but my heart feels open all of a sudden, open for Cece, this beautiful, odd person who cannot read analog clocks or tell the difference between left and right, who’s been sticking with me through thin and thin and thin for the past seven years. For a moment, all I want is to open my mouth and say, I hate art house movies. Could we watch a rom-com sometimes? Riverdale? Literally any Kardashian show?

What comes out is “You look like a weirdo, pouring milk before the cereal, but I love you anyway.”

I step out to her middle finger. Then my phone rings, and that’s when my night collapses like an accordion.

In my defense, I pick up assuming it’s Jack, calling to say that he’s late, or that I’m late, or that someone hammered him in the frontal lobe and the resulting brain injury helped him realize that he doesn’t want to see me ever again. A tragic miscalculation on my part, because:

“Elsie, finally. You need to come home right now.”

“Mom?”

“Lance is now with Dana. And Lucas punched him after the soccer game. Everyone saw.”

God. “But I talked to them last week. Lance said he wasn’t interested—”

“He lied, Elsie. I’m disappointed in you for not picking up on it.”

“I—” I exhale, stepping out of the building. “He seemed sincere.”

“That’s why you need to come home and help me sort this out. I have been so tense and jittery. My poor nerves.”

“Mom, I can’t. I don’t have a car, for one. And I have classes.”

“Just find a substitute teacher.”

“That’s not—I’m not—Mom.” I spot Jack’s car. It’s freezing cold. Every instinct yells at me to first finish my conversation, but I cannot resist getting in. The seat is already heated, Jack’s hair still shower damp, curling in soft wisps on his neck. He looks freshly shaved and smells divine—like soap they sell in fancy boutiques and the hollow of his throat when I slept nestled in his arms.

One minute, I mouth. He nods. Mom’s going on about how Lance is misunderstood, Lucas is sensitive, Dad is busy with work, and the mean ladies at church are sure to be rejoicing in the downfall of the once-esteemed Hannaway household. Meanwhile, Jack studies me through my open coat. My dress hits only about midthigh when I’m sitting. His eyes follow the line of the hem, stop on my knees. Linger for a longer-than-polite moment. Then his Adam’s apple bobs, and he turns away. His shoulders rise, then fall, and then he’s driving out of the parking lot, looking anywhere but at me.

Oh.

“Mom, I have to go. I’ll call them both tomorrow and talk them out of . . . illegal stuff, at the very least—”

“You can’t solve this at a distance.”

I sigh. “I’ll do my best. Honestly, I’m not sure I can solve this at all. I’m not sure anyone can.”

Mom gasps, outraged. “How can you be so selfish, Elsie?”

I exhale slowly. “I don’t think I’m being selfish. I’ll help as soon as I’m able, but they’re both beyond listening to anything I—”

“Unbelievable,” she says, and then . . . nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

“Jack?” I say.

“Yes?”

“If I’m talking with someone and out of the blue I hear the busy signal . . . what does it mean?”

He gives me a look. “Sounds like you already know.”

“Oh my God.” I’m dumbstruck. “My mom just hung up on me.”

He nods. “Should I be shocked? Is that something that doesn’t happen in functional families?”

“I . . . don’t know. Does your father hang up on you?”

“Does my father have my number?”

I laugh, and we exchange a half-clueless, half-amused glance. Peas in a pod, really. “It’s a first.” My stomach feels heavy. “She usually likes me. Or pretends to, anyway.”

Jack looks at me with his resting I see you face. I’m not used to Mom being this mad at me. It feels terrible, like my entire soul is passing a kidney stone, and suddenly the idea of going out to dinner holds zero appeal. It’ll be good, I tell myself. You like his friends. Laughter is the best medicine. Or opiates.

“Want to tell me what happened?” he asks gently, twisting the car through Boston’s narrow one-ways.

“My family is . . . embarrassing.”

“More so than a dozen people in monogrammed shirts vulture-circling a ninety-year-old in the hope that she’ll drop dead and a few wads of cash will roll in their direction?”

“My family would do the same, if there were any money to be had. If something happened to my grandma, my brothers would beat each other up over the six-pack of beer she left in the fridge.”

“Is that what they’re fighting about? Beer?”

“I wish. It’s . . .” I roll my eyes. It sounds too stupid to bear. “A girl.”

“A girl.”

“Well, she’s a woman now. But she was a girl when it all began.”

He frowns. “How old are your brothers?”

“Older than me. And honestly, I blame this entire mess on traumatic encephalopathy. Both of them were on the football team getting their brains oatmealed, and there were seventy million cheerleaders they could have, I don’t know, played D&D under the bleachers with, but no, they decided to choose the same one. Dana.”

His mouth twitches. “I don’t think that’s what people do under the bleachers, Elsie.”

“They’re my brothers, okay? For the purpose of this conversation, they’ve been fighting over the exclusive right to attend Dana’s decoupage classes. And the most ridiculous thing is, they fancy themselves in some kind of Legends of the Fall situation. They both think that the big love of their life is doomed to fail because of the machinations of their evil twin, but the truth is, it’s so obvious from the outside that no one loves anyone here. Dana gets ninety percent of her dopamine from watching two guys fight over her. Mom only cares about what her cousin’s husband’s sister’s nanny thinks, and is totally fine with them shanking each other as long as they do it privately. And the sad thing is, Lucas and Lance used to be best friends. They’d have fun trying to convince me that ChapStick was made of dromedary sperm and watching me gag. But by now . . . they’ve forgotten that they’re brothers, forgotten why they liked Dana in the first place, and are just chickens pecking at each other’s feed—like they’re two hydrogen atoms, and Dana is the electron they constantly steal back and forth. But they’re both nonmetals, and even though they wish they could pluck that electron out for good and keep it for themselves, nope, same electronegativity, sorry, it won’t work. And we’re back to square one every six damn months.”