“Stockholm syndrome,” Leo tells him.

“Bruh,” Garray says.

“Or you know,” Logan continues, and I wish he’d shut the fuck up. “Maybe he’s that fucking in love with her he killed her and then himself, like this here,”—he raises a finger, spins it in circles—“Romero and Juliet.”

Leo says, “Romeo and Juliet, dickwad. Smoke another joint.”

“Can’t.” Logan jumps off the chair. “Hot Cop Lady is all up in my shit thanks to Luke.”

Swear my brain literally explodes and for some fucked-up reason, I actually believe (for a second) that Logan is onto something. I mean, Cooper’s not a fucking nutjob, right? He’s just your standard self-entitled dick.

“Costumes are here!” Miss Lepsitch shouts, and I practically sprint over to her.

“Where’s Lane?”

“Who?”

There are people everywhere now, trying to find their costumes amongst the pile in her arms.

“Lois! Where’s Lois?”

“She just dropped these off. She’s gone back home. She must really not be feeling well.”

I tell the boys I’m out and put Leo in charge, then waste nineteen seconds arguing with Dumb Name about why he’s not in charge simply because he was born a couple of years earlier.

Luckily, Logan butts in. “Get over it, pindick. Let Luke find his Juliet.”

I make my escape while they go toe-to-toe, and I get in my car and I think about Laney and think about who would actually win if Logan and Dumb Name got in a fist fight. Dumb Name’s tall, scrawny but lean. But Logan carries enough unjustified anger to set off security gates at an airport. Cameron told me once that emotion always wins when it comes down to a fight. Always. So yeah, I’d probably put my money on Logan.

I park in Lane’s driveway and go right to the basement door. The outside light isn’t on, but I don’t expect it to be because I haven’t knocked on it since September 25TH.

There’s no answer, so I move to the front door. Again, no answer. I creep around the house looking through all the windows, but there doesn’t seem to be anyone home. Laney’s car’s here, but Brian’s isn’t. Maybe he took her to the hospital or something. Maybe it was more than just a horrible flu. I call Brian. He says he’s at Misty’s getting ready to see the play. He doesn’t know where Laney is. She’s not answering her phone.

Fuck.

I picture Laney in a dungeon.

I picture Laney dead in a dungeon with dead Cooper next to her.

Dad calls me, tells me he’s on his way to the play with the younger boys and that I should come home because Laney isn’t in a dungeon. She’s not dead. She’s sitting on my apartment stairs.

I’m out of breath when I get to her and it’s not because I’m unfit, it’s because I was worried. I pick her up off the stairs and hold her and hold her, and she winces in pain because she’s sick, you idiot.

“What’s with you?” she asks when I put her back down.

“Dungeons and Stockholm and Romero.”

Her eyes widen. “What?!”

I take a calming breath. “Logan.”

She raises her hand between us. “Say no more.”

The second we’re in my apartment, she looks over at the empty kitchen sink. “No dishes?”

I shake my head. “No dishes.” Then I take her hand, lead her over to the couch. “Sit,” I order.

She sits.

I go to the kitchen, take out the canned chicken soup, pour it into a pot and switch on the stove. Then I get a microwavable heating pad from my room and throw it in the microwave, wait for one minute, take it out, stir the pot, go to Lane, and place the heating pad on her back where I know she likes to be rubbed. “What are you doing, Luke?” she asks.

I shrug. “You’re sick.”

“And you’re sweet,” she says.

Okay, here’s a story that’s going to take you on a real tangent.

One time, in tenth grade, I dated a senior named Rachelle. Rachelle was the head cheerleader, the hottest girl in school (excluding Laney, of course) and she was interested in me! Logan overheard me having a conversation with Dad asking for some shifts so I could buy Rachelle some fucking bag she kept showing me. Logan shouted that I was pussy-whipped. Lachlan was in the room, and pussy-whipped is not something you say around a four year old because four year olds ask a lot of questions, like “What does pussy-whipped mean?”

Logan left the room, leaving Dad and me to answer because fuck Logan. Anyway, Dad explained that pussy-whipped meant that you didn’t like cats and you whipped them. So now, almost three years later, Lachlan makes it his mission to make sure I’m never around cats. The point of this story? I’m pussy-whipped by Lane, and she’s not even my girlfriend. Because the truth is I’d planned all of this—not the how it happened or the way it happened, but I planned on her being in my apartment and me taking care of her. Proof: the soup that’s currently heating on my stove.

I get the soup, put it in a bowl, watch her eat the soup. After she puts the empty bowl down on the coffee table, she says, “You know why I always do your dishes when I walk in?”

She was gone a week, and I missed her voice and her hair and her eyes and her coconuts, lime and Laney. “Why?”

“Because I never know what to do when I walk in here, so I do the dishes and you either sit on the couch and turn on the TV or you sit on the floor and do your homework, and once you’re settled, I follow your lead.”

“Really?” I ask.

She smiles. “Really.”

“And what would happen if I went to my bedroom and stripped naked?” Too far, dickhead. But then she gives me a sound that shifts reality, and I know she’s good, and I’m good, and we’re great.

I pull her feet on my lap and notice what she’s wearing for the first time. Baggy sweatpants and an oversized hoodie and it’s not even cold outside. “How long were you waiting for me and did you walk here?”

“Not long and yes, why?”

“Because you’re all bundled up like it’s the middle of January. Are you cold? You want me to turn the heat up?”

She pokes my leg with her feet, and I start rubbing them through her socks and seriously, cats, hide from me. Whip whip whip.

I don’t even want to tell you the effects I have from the sounds she makes when I start massaging her feet, because truth? It’s a little embarrassing, and now her head’s tilted back on the arm of the couch, and her eyes are closed, and her chest are breasts, and they’re moving, and she murmurs, “I have to tell you something.”

“Okay.”

“I broke up with Cooper.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

LUCAS

Girls and guys are so different. Girls say things like: “We loved each other, but we didn’t like each other, or maybe it was the other way around.”

Guys say: “We were both kind of over it, you know?”

And I’d never been on this end of a breakup story, one being told by a girl, and I kind of wish that Lucy had dated more when she was younger so I could’ve eavesdropped on her conversations and been prepared for this. As it turns out, Lane was the one who broke up with Cooper, yet she’s the one crying on my shoulder while he’s probably balls deep in angry rebound sex. “I know it sounds dumb,” she says, sniffling into my shirt. “It’s just he’s the first real boyfriend I’ve ever had, and he’d become such a huge part of my life and now… now he’s gone.”