I sigh, letting go of her. "You can't skip it?"

"Afraid not," she says. "The time has come to declare a major finally."

Huh.

I'm not exactly surprised. She's been in school for quite a while now and she's running out of time. But she hasn't mentioned it before this moment.

Hasn't brought it up at all.

"So what are you declaring?"

"Dunno."

"You don't know."

"Nope."

"No idea at all?"

She shakes her head. "Thinking about playing eeny-meeny-miny-moe at this point."

I don't know what to tell her.

She's been indecisive for as long as I've known her.

"You shouldn't do something just for the sake of doing something," I tell her.

"Says the guy who just a few weeks ago told me he needed a hobby for something to do."

I guess she got me there.

I'm still trying to figure out my something.

Because this life? This tug-of-war? It isn't it.

"Get dressed and I'll drive you into the city," I say, motioning toward the stairs.

She heads upstairs, to the bedroom, and I make my way to the den, taking a seat on the couch to wait. My chest is still tight from my visit to Genova's. My lungs feel like flames have charred them. Someone punched holes in me before setting my insides on fire, making sure that every inch of me burns.

I'm in a daze, staring at the wall, going over the conversation this morning, again and again stewing over his words. My eyes sting, and I close them as I lay my head back, stealing a moment of darkness to try to find some peace.

Peace.

Peace.

All I fucking want is some peace.

"Naz?"

My eyes open at the sound of my name, meeting Karissa's gaze. She stands right in front of me, already dressed, her hair fixed and a bit of makeup on her face.

Sitting up, I groan, rubbing my eyes. "That was quick."

"Uh, not really... it took me like forty-five minutes."

I look at her with confusion. Forty-five minutes? "I must've dozed off."

I start to stand up when she presses her hands to my chest, shoving me back against the couch. "Why don't you just get some sleep?"

"What about lunch?"

She scoffs. "I can feed myself."

"I told you I'd give you a ride to the city."

"I can find my own way there."

I debate that, and almost refute it, but truth is, I'm exhausted and could use some rest. "Call a car."

"I will," she says. "I'll look both ways before I cross the street, and I won't even take candy from strangers, even if it's chocolate."

Grabbing her, I pull her down toward me, giving her a kiss. "Good girl."

T he moment I open the door to the deli, I'm greeted by a sound.

Whistling.

It's loud and enthusiastic, downright cheerful, echoing overtop of the usual chatter. The sound makes me pause, my eyes seeking out the source over behind the long counter.

Giuseppe.

He's cutting meat at the slicer, his back to everyone. It's like he's in his own world... a world full of rainbows, and sunshine, and whatever else makes people happy.

Puppies?

I don't know.

Happiness to me these days is orgasms.

Weeks have passed since the last time I came here, since the day gunfire tried to rain on the man's parade. I'm not sure when Giuseppe reopened the deli, but my fears of it hurting his business were obviously unfounded.

The place is chaotic.

People pack the tables, eating lunch, as the boy working the cash register helps customers, orders piling up. Giuseppe doesn't at all seem concerned about that, though. He's not rushing in any way.

He's enjoying it.

The cashier glances at me as I approach and smiles warmly. "Your usual?"

I have a usual.

Naz would lecture me about that.

"Sure," I say, pulling out some cash to pay, leaving the change with him at the register, like usual, for them to keep as a tip.

There's only one small table empty, a two-seater along the wall that somebody just vacated, leaving their scraps just lying there. Ugh. I clean it off, throwing the trash in a nearby trashcan, and turn back around to take a seat when one of the chairs pulls out and somebody plops down in it.

Un-fucking-believable.

"Excuse me," I say loudly, approaching the table. "I was sitting there."

The guy looks up, and something inside of me twists. I blanch. It's wrong, I know it, and I feel terrible right away, but I physically recoil.

I don't know him, have never seen him before, but he's got a one-of-a-kind face. A horrid scar cuts down the whole side of it, right through his eye. The color of it is milky, cloudy, the blue sort of like a murky lake. It seems to stare right through me.

Vacant.

He notices my reaction. Ugh, he notices. I can tell it in his expression, the way his lips draw into a hard, thin line. It's like he toughened up in just those few seconds, like he's steeling himself because of my reaction to his face.

God, I suck.

I'm a horrible person.

"Apologies," he says. "There was nowhere else to sit."

He roughly shoves the chair back to stand up, but I stop him as I sit down across from him. "No, wait, it's totally okay."

He pauses, halfway out of the seat, and raises his eyebrows.

"There's no reason you can't sit here, too," I say. "I mean, I don't need that chair, and you're right... there's nowhere else to sit. So, really… have a seat."

He looks like he might still leave, and just stares at me in silence, his expression strained, before he settles back into the chair.

Digging through my bag, I pull out a beat-up catalogue of NYU. It'll probably be a while before I get my food, so I might as well go through it again and try to make some kind of decision about what I'm doing.

"So, I'm guessing you're a student?"

He says it quietly as he tinkers with a watch on his wrist, running his fingers along the metal band. It looks crazy expensive, like it might even be a Rolex, but he isn't exactly dressed like a wealthy businessman. Jeans, and a t-shirt, with a pair of white sneakers on his feet. He almost looks like he could be a student, except he's a bit older than me.

Thirty, maybe even older... I don't know.

I'm not good at judging age.

"Yeah, I am."

"What are you studying?"

"Uh, I'm not sure. I've just been kind of taking whatever. I'm actually supposed to declare a major in like, two hours, and I still have no idea what I want to do."

He laughs, the sound low and casual, like that genuinely amuses him. "Not easy deciding your future, is it?"

"Not in the least," I mutter, flipping through the pages of majors. "I've always sucked at making decisions, though, so this really is nothing new. It's just... I guess I have a hard time imagining myself doing any of this forever."

"That's because forever could be a very long time," he says. "Nobody wants to do the same thing forever. Nobody I know, anyway."

"That's what worries me," I say. "I like going to school, and learning, but I'm just not sure where it's going, and if I don't know where it's going, I'm worried there's no point, you know?"