“And where do you come in?” Jack asks, voice quiet in the car after my bout of yelling. I feel guilty for unloading my entire life story on him, like he’s Oprah or something. I should be fun.

“Mom sends me in to broker peace.” I squirm against the seat. Jack’s eyes slide to my legs, or maybe they don’t. The car is dark and I can’t tell.

“Why?”

“What do you mean?”

“It sounds like your brothers are having issues with one another.” I nod. “Why does she send you?”

“I—because—we—” It’s such a Why is the sky blue? question. Scattering of solar light through the atmosphere, duh. “It’s my family.”

“It’s your mom’s family, too. And your dad’s, and your brothers’. And yet they’re fine with not addressing the issue and asking you to take care of it.” He takes a right turn, and the lights of the truck coming toward us hit his jaw at the perfect, most handsome angle. There’s the way he looks, his low voice, this smell of his. What does this man want with this? With me?

“I owe it to them.”

“You do?”

“Yes. You don’t understand—I was . . . I gave them lots of problems growing up. My diagnosis was such a hassle for them, and the medical care was so expensive. I owe it to them.” My stomach drops. Now Mom is mad at me. I’m an ingrate.

“So, to summarize: Because your pancreas stopped producing insulin when you were a child, you now owe your family a doula-worthy degree of emotional labor?”

It sounds horrible, put like that. Downright horrifying. But. “Yeah, kind of.”

“What does your family think of your job situation?”

“Oh, that.” I shrug. “Not much.” I don’t plan to elaborate, but he’s giving me a raised-eyebrow look, and I want him to check the road. “I don’t tell them about that stuff.”

“You don’t tell them about your life?”

“It’s not what I meant.” Though I don’t. “Just . . . I’m a first-generation college student.”

“There are plenty of first-generation academics whose parents are supportive and engaged.”

I roll my eyes. Because it’s not like I don’t know that he’s right, or like my heart doesn’t feel heavy at the thought. “Just go ahead and do it.”

“Do what?”

“You’re dying to armchair-psychologize me.”

He doesn’t even hide how entertaining he finds me. “Am I?”

“You obviously have an opinion.”

“Hmm.”

“Just say it.”

“Say what?”

“That I don’t tell my family about my job because I’m unable to let people know that I’m more than the sum of the ways I can be useful to them. That if I show my true self, with my needs and my wants, I risk being rejected. That I’ve wielded my ability to hide who I am like an emotional antiseptic, and in the process I’ve turned myself into a puppet. Or a watermelon with googly eyes.”

He maneuvers the car past the glow of the streetlights, and as the seconds pass in silence, I grow afraid that I’ve said too much, showed too much, been me too much. But then:

“Well.” His smile is fond. Tender. “My job here is done.”

I close my eyes, letting my forehead slide against the window—hot skin and cold glass. “I know how messed up I am.”

“You do?”

“Yeah. I just . . . I don’t know how to stop.”

“Then maybe my job is not done. And you should stick around.” I turn to check whether his expression matches his tone—a mix of teasing, sweet, amused, hopeful, other things I can never understand.

Then I notice where we are. “This is your apartment.”

“Yup.” He parks. No, he reverse parks. Without sweating or crying or a litany of fuck shit fuck. I hate him.

“Did you forget something?”

“Nope.”

“Then why—?”

“I figured we’d take it easy tonight. Relax.”

“What about your friends?”

“They can entertain themselves.”

“But they’re waiting for us.”

“Nah. I texted them.”

“When?”

“While you were comparing your brothers’ relationship to a nonpolar covalent bond.”

“I . . . Why?”

“Because you’re obviously upset. And probably had a long week at work. And you had more-or-less nonconsensual lunches with two people whom I know to be giant pains in the ass. I think it’s better if we stay in.” He kills the engine. “Just us.”

“But . . .” I look up at his building. Unlike mine, it doesn’t look like it’s twenty minutes from being condemned and thirty-five minutes from burning down due to exposed circuitry. “What are we even going to do?”

I hear the smile in his words. “I have a couple of ideas.”

•   •   •

“So, Breaking Dawn’s the first one.”

“What? No. Twilight is the first one. Otherwise it’d be the Breaking Dawn Saga.”

“Right. Need a blanket?”

The lights are low, but Jack tracks my movements as I shake my head and fold my legs underneath me. The hot chocolate he made sits on the coffee table, right next to his Heineken, and I think I saw him raise the thermostat when we first came in, after he noticed me shivering in the chilly hallway. I’m overdressed, over-made-up, overcurled for a night on the couch. I don’t care, though.

“Okay.” He grabs the remote and sits next to me, near but nonthreatening. Not close enough to touch, but the cushion shifts, and the air around me is warmer. Denser.

“I cannot believe you own a Twilight box set.”

“I needed to see what the fuss is about.”

“You bought the Blu-rays. Who buys Blu-rays?”

“People who can’t find the VHS.”

I study him. His odd, beautiful eyes. “How old are you, precisely?”

“Seventy-three.”

I laugh. “No, for real.”

“Seventeen.”

“You’re thirty-three, aren’t you? Thirty-two. Thirty-four?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know.”

“Give me a hint. What do you remember most from your childhood? Slime? The DSL dial tone? Butterfly hair clips? People dying of the bubonic plague?”

“You can shit on my Twilight Forever box set all you want—I’ve seen the way you’re eyeing it.”

“With polite but detached interest?”

“With shameless, covetous lust for the ‘Edward Goes to Italy’ featurette.”

I laugh again. It’s nice, being here where it’s warm. “So what do you know about the movies?”

He drums his fingers on his knee. “They have a bloodcurdling CGI kid named Elizabelle—”

“Renesmee.”

“—and something about sparkly dermatology? Spider monkeys?”

“There’s also vampire baseball.”

“Encouraging.”

“Okay, real talk.” I turn a little toward him. “Are you going to hate this?”

“Probably. But no more than 2001: A Space Odyssey.”

“What do you like?”

“Physics-defying car chases, mostly. People climbing buildings. Space monsters.” He shrugs. “George calls them my ‘white male rage’ movies.”

“Okay, well, we can watch one of those. Avengers’ Infinity Endgame or something with The Rock. I mean, what about what you want?”

“What about that?”

“We never focus on that.”

“That’s because I have no issues asking for what I want.”

“That felt like a backdoor brag,” I mumble resentfully.

“It was fully front door.”

I play with the hem of my dress. “I understand that this is about helping me reclaim my individuality, but if we’re going to be friends, we should do stuff you like, too. Otherwise—”

“Elsie.” Hands on my chin, he lifts it till my eyes are on his. “You’re doing it. We’re doing it.” I keep looking until I cannot bear it anymore, then free myself.

“Okay, well.” I swallow. Twice. “You still didn’t need to buy the box set.”

“I told you, I—”

“No, I mean . . .” My cheeks are warm. “It’s streaming on Netflix. And on Prime.”

I pluck the remote from his hand before he can ask me how I know. And then I ignore the amused way his eyes linger on me, and laugh over my hot chocolate at his soft comments: “Very green,” or “They go to high school?” or “What’s up with the ketchup bottle?”