She doesn’t even look up at me when she walks past, her head lowered, books held close to her chest. She looks different. Her glasses, I realize. Hers are black, and these are bright purple and three years old. Her script’s changed twice since she wore those and they look odd on her now, because just like her eyesight, she’s changed, too.

And to think I was actually nervous about seeing her today. I stood in front of my mirror and planned out what I would say to her. It started off with the standard stuff. “Hi, how are you?”…“Did you have a good break?” Even though I knew how she spent her Christmas (at her house with Cooper while her dad was in Savannah with Misty’s family), I’d ask her about that, too. “How did you hold up after New Year’s Eve?” was another one. And then I’d be done with the bullshit banter and ask, “What the fuck is wrong with you?” Then I’d go on a tirade about Cooper fucking Kennedy and how I don’t think he’s good enough for her and “Why the hell are you even with him, Laney?”

But no.

She didn’t see me standing here, waiting for her, wanting to expose her bullshit relationship.

She didn’t see me at all.

And when she enters the school, the door closing behind her, blocking me from her presence, it all becomes clear—maybe she never truly saw me at all.

It’s been three days and eight hours since she didn’t see me, but she’s seeing me now, stepping out of my truck and looking up at my apartment stairs where she sits, waiting for me to come home from school. How she managed to get here before me, I have no idea. Maybe she wasn’t at school. I didn’t see her, but then again, I stopped looking for her. Didn’t you hear? I’m blocked.

My phone alerts me to a text, and I pause, make her wait, and read the message.

It’s Sandy from your NYE party. My friend gave me your number. I wanted to see if you wanted to get together sometime. Maybe grab a bite to eat?

I reply: Tonight? What are you craving?

I hope it’s cock because it’s been a long time since I’ve been with Laney, and I haven’t been with anyone since. It would feel like eating a frozen meal after a gourmet steak.

She writes back: Pizza.

Fuck irony in the ass.

“Lucas?” Laney’s standing now, watching me from above, her eyes squinted because her stupid purple glasses are too weak to make her see clearly. Or maybe she’s too weak. Maybe Cooper’s fucked with her head so much she can’t even see straight.

I ask, “What are you doing here?”

“I was waiting for you,” she says. She shuffles on her feet, and I get it because I felt the same way in her room. She doesn’t know if she belongs here and the truth is, maybe she doesn’t. I don’t want her on my steps, near my house, near me. I’m blocked, remember? But by the time I make my way up each step (twelve), she’s looking at me with those eyes, and swear it, those eyes hold a secret power that can bring me to my knees. “Are you busy tonight?” she asks, and she’s looking at my phone like she knows all my secrets. She does.

I want to tell her that I have a date with a girl I fucked on New Year’s Eve, but I can’t lie to her. Not when she has those eyes. “I can cancel.”

“Feel like hanging out?” she asks. “Like old times.”

Old times is a phrase that shouldn’t exist in an eighteen year old’s vocabulary because we haven’t lived enough to have “old times.” I tell her that as I open the door, and she laughs. Her laugh to my ears is what money is to the Kennedys—a tool used to manipulate reality. I know this. I feel this. But I’m as weak as her vision, and I concede, keep the door open for her to enter.

I shoot off a text to Sandy: Something came up. Sorry.

Lane’s already in my kitchen washing the dishes piled high in the sink, like old times.

Small talk shouldn’t seem like small talk when you’re with a friend. It should just be conversation, but my mind is buzzing, trying to come up with “small talk” and there are birds outside and they’re loud, too loud, and I can’t think. She finishes the dishes, turns to me. She’s wearing clothes that actually fit her, a little too well, skinny jeans and a loose (but not baggy) sweater, and I ask, “What happened to your other glasses?”

She shrugs. “It was time for a new pair.”

Why is she lying to me? “They look like the same pair you had a few years ago.”

Her eyes widen, her cheeks redden. Deer meet headlights. “They are. I mean, the same frames, not the lenses, though.”

I press my lips tight and make a show of looking anywhere but at her because it’s awkward as fuck and seriously, small talk can blow me.

She’s going through the kitchen cabinets, and I don’t know what she’s looking for. If it’s the good old days, she can forget it. She won’t find them here. She pulls out a bag of Doritos and salsa and goes to the fridge for the cheese. She’s making nachos because she’s desperate to find the old times, and I’m desperate to know what the hell she’s doing here. “How are things, like, with your brothers and stuff?” Lane asks. “How’s it all going?”

I don’t respond.

“My dad said that Logan got a slap on the wrist…?”

“Yeah. We’re lucky, your dad’s girlfriend vouched for him.”

She faces me, her lips curved. “Misty’s good like that,” she says.

Okay, so maybe her being here isn’t so much awkward as it is terrifying. She wants to go back to the way things were, and yeah, I want that, too. A little too much. But she has the power to take it away, to block me, and then what? What happens to me, Laney?

It takes two minutes for her to make the nachos and bring the bowl over to the couch along with two glasses of water. We sit on the couch, share the nachos (fuck yeah, nachos!), and she says, “I was thinking about the twins.”

“Oh yeah?”

“It’s because people are jealous. That’s why they bully them the way they do.”

“You think?”

She nods. “Think about it. I can’t ever recall them picking up a sport or an activity and not being great at it. And they’re great because they always have someone to practice with or compete against. Kids can be bitter and vindictive little assholes.” There’s a hint of anger in her tone, and it makes me smile. “You like this batch?” she asks, pointing to the bowl of nachos.

“They’re good.”

“Good is the enemy of great, Lucas,” she sings.

I give her a cheesy grin. “They’re great!”

She laughs, and my reality shifts, just an inch. And just like that, small talk turns to conversation. We finish the nachos, and she sets the bowl on the coffee table and sits sideways on the couch, her legs up, knees bent, toes poking my leg. “So, I have some news.”

I take her feet, settle them on my lap and turn to her, my arm resting on the top of the couch. Old times is good times. Great times. “What’s your news?”

“There’s a slight chance I’ll still be able to go to UNC.”

My heart races. “How? Did your mom—”

“No!” She shakes her head and scoffs. “Fuck that bitch.” I’ll give Cooper this—he’s boosted Lane’s confidence because before him, she’d never say anything like that. She’d make bullshit excuses for her mom until one day she started to believe them.