The conversation’s been going for thirty-eight minutes, and swear it’s like reeling in a fish. You throw the line, they bite, then slowly, gently, you have to pull in the line, and sometimes they fight, move away, and you can’t rush so you keep going, slowly, gently. She keeps making up excuses, and the excuses turn to regrets, and the regrets turn to reasons to go back to him and slowly, gently, with my words, I reel her back in.

She says he was controlling, and I agree. She says he was unpredictable, and I agree (even though I have no idea what she means), but she also says that he was there for her at a time when she felt like no one else was, and I (reluctantly) agree.

“I never really thought that I had confidence issues, you know?” she says, staring ahead. “He had this way of making me see things differently. Or just, making me see in general. And I think I needed that. After what happened with you and me—”

“Laney,” I say through a sigh, cutting her off.

She turns to me. “No, it’s okay. I can talk about it now… and I think we should talk about it. Don’t you?”

I didn’t think her being here, her saying “I broke up with Cooper” would lead to this; her and me talking about my regrets. “I never meant to hurt you,” I tell her. “When I left you that night, I had every intention of coming back to you. Of spending…” the rest of my life with you… “the night with you. And then…”

“I know.” She laughs once. “I think I had so much invested in that one night. It was stupid.”

“Ouch.”

“No. What we did wasn’t stupid. I didn’t mean that. I meant I had so much invested in you and me and that was stupid.”

Still ouch. “And now?”

“Now what?”

“How do you feel about you and me?”

She smiles, drops her gaze. “I feel like I just got out of a really complicated relationship so…”

“So… I’ll wait?”

“Lucas,” she whispers, her smile getting wider.

I ask, “When did you actually break up with him?”

Her shoulders hunch, mind searching. “I haven’t been completely honest… with a lot of people.”

“What does that mean?”

“I haven’t been sick,” she admits. “I’ve just been… gone.”

“What does gone mean? And answer my question.”

“Promise you won’t be mad?”

I nod once.

“I broke up with him the night after he showed up at school. Cooper drove us to his dorm while I spent the entire ride preparing what I was going to say and how I was going to say it—break up with him, I mean—and we got to his room, and I did and said everything I prepared in the car, and I was going to call you, ask you to pick me up, but he refused to let me leave.”

“Refused how?”

“Just stood by the door, you know? I was going to wait for him to fall asleep and sneak out of there, but Cooper doesn’t sleep—”

“He doesn’t sleep? Like, ever?”

Her head moves from side to side, but her eyes stay locked on mine. “Ever since he’s been back on the team, he’s started taking these ADHD meds, and now and then he crashes, and crashes hard, but he doesn’t actually sleep, you know?”

“He has ADHD?” I ask. We’re both sitting up now, facing each other.

“No! That’s the thing. He doesn’t. But he buys them off some guy on campus and he pops them like candy along with all these other meds and it keeps him awake and alert for days on end so he can keep up with his classes and his training and his dad’s bullshit business agenda and his dad’s bullshit in general.”

I don’t care enough to keep talking about Cooper, so I ask, “Where the fuck have you been, Lane?”

She sighs, takes a sip of her water. “I managed to escape—”

“Escape?!” Christ, maybe Logan was onto something.

“You know what I mean! The next morning, he went to meet the guy for some anti-anxiety drugs, and I left, but I didn’t have a car, so I caught a bus to Charlotte and by the time I got there I was exhausted, and Cooper had been calling like crazy and I knew if I went home he’d find me and want to talk some more so I got a hotel room for the night and I’ve been there since.”

My eyes are so wide I can feel them stretching my face. “You’ve been there for more than a week?”

She nods.

“But your dad said you were sick.”

Another sigh. “I asked Cooper to tell him that, and we both kept up the front. I told Coop I was visiting my mom—he doesn’t know about her. Not like you do.”

I WIN. Just saying.

She adds, “I just haven’t been ready to face Cooper or my dad or you, and I needed the time. You understand, right?”

Not really. “Yeah, Laney, I understand.”

And with the explanations done, she goes back to crying, and I do my best to let her go through her emotions on her own, no matter how hard it is not to shake her and tell her that her tears are wasteful and that guy was a fucking dick.

An hour later, Leo and Logan visit the apartment and tell us how opening night went. The rundown goes like this:

Logan punched Garray.

Leo got the girl’s number.

Juliet said, “Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo?” and Lachlan shouted, “Sexing!” and the entire theater laughed and laughed and laughed.

But Laney doesn’t. She smiles, but there’s no reality-shifting sound and the guys see it and they make an excuse to leave, and Laney goes to wash the pot and the ladle and the bowl used for her soup I’d made when she wasn’t even sick. “I’m sorry you missed it,” she says when I step behind her.

“I don’t care. I’d rather be with you.” I shut off the water and dry her hands with a cloth, leave the dirty dishes in the sink. I keep one hand around hers, the other reaching up to cup the side of her face. She flinches, probably afraid I’ll make a move now that she’s single, but I’m not a dick, and I don’t want to be her angry rebound fuck.

I want to be her everything.

“You look tired,” I tell her, and she does.

She whispers, another sob forming in her throat, “I’m so tired, Lucas. Of everything.”

I lead her to my bed, move the covers to the side and wait for her to get in. “You want one minute?” I ask, and she frowns, removes her glasses and puts them on the nightstand.

She settles on the pillow, her eyes drifting shut. “Luke?”

“Yeah?”

“How do you get over it, you know, move on?”

“I’m the wrong person to ask that question,” I say, shaking my head.

“But you’ve dated a lot of girls before, so… how?” She looks so desperate, so in need of closure.

I hate asking the question as much as I hate already knowing the answer. “Did you love Cooper?”

She doesn’t miss a beat. “Yes.”

“Then I can’t give you the answers you need, Lane. I may have been with a lot of girls, but I didn’t love any of them.” I look away. “I mean, there was one,”—You—“and that lasted all of one night.”