He produced a two-liter Diet Coke from the edge of the shower and filled my glass. As it began to foam over the edge, he put his finger in it to stop the fizzing.

“No glass for you?” I asked.

Cole sucked his finger before taking a swig directly from the bottle. “I’ll rough it.”

“Noble.”

It was hard to imagine a person on the planet managing to be uncharmed by this Cole.

He asked, “Can I peel an egg for you?”

“I don’t know, can you?”

“May I?”

I waved a hand. He arduously peeled an egg and handed it to me. I nibbled the white while he worked on the other. I got to the middle, which was rather underdone, just as I noticed that Cole had pretty much swallowed his without chewing it.

“Chug chug chug,” he told me.

I gave it to him instead. “Are they really filming everything you do?”

Cole swallowed the rest of my egg and handed me a donut instead. “It’s supposed to be just an off-the-cuff documentary about me recording this album. But I’m sure they’re hoping I mess up.”

I held his gaze over the donut. Cole was in possession of so many different precedents for messing up that it was hard to know which one was the worst one to be caught on film.

“Could it happen?” I asked him.

His voice was careless. “Impossible.”

It was like when he had answered so quickly before to say that he was here for me. I couldn’t believe an answer given that easily. But maybe it was impossible. I didn’t know the rules of shifting anymore. Once upon a time, it had seemed to be temperature-based. The colder it was, the more likely you were to be a wolf. But it had never seemed to work very reliably for Cole, who had studiously cooked his brain chemistry through a number of substances. When I’d left Minnesota, he had been conducting experiments on the shifting.

I suspected that now he could do it on purpose.

I didn’t know how I felt about that. It was better than heroin, I guessed, but it wasn’t heroin that had killed my brother.

He offered me another donut, which I accepted. The waxiness wasn’t bad when you washed it down with enough Diet Coke.

I asked, “Does Sam know you’re here?”

Sam was one of the members of the wolf pack back in Minnesota. Sort of. He was sort of cured. Sort of getting there.

I probably should have called him to see how he was. Probably should have called Grace, too, to see if she was happily anticipating college. But like I said. I wasn’t really friendly.

“Yeah.”

“Did he think it was a good idea?”

Cole shrugged. “His concept of a good idea is majoring in obscure poetry. He wanted to know the pack was taken care of, and they are. I have it all set up. They’ll be fine until winter.

And, anyway, he knew I wanted to make some of my own money back again. Not that being a property owner isn’t incredibly satisfying.”

This was because Cole had bought the piece of land the wolves lived on now.

What about me?

“It didn’t have to be California,” he said. “It could have been New York. Nashville.”

He didn’t say anything else. I didn’t want to ask him anything more about it, because I felt strangely emotional and unbalanced over just the few words he’d already said.

Instead, I asked, “What about your green egg?”

Cole picked up the kiwi fruit. “Do you peel it?”

“Not with your fingers,” I said. I didn’t really know. I’d only ever seen them as God intended: peeled and sliced. Sofia probably knew four ways to prepare one. “The skin is thick?”

He bit the fruit just enough to cut through the furry skin and worked at the edge with his fingers. It looked like he was taking the fruit’s jacket off. After he’d revealed a precious inch of the interior, he offered it to me across the table. “First dibs?”

I leaned forward to take a bite. Juice welled on my lips, and before I could wipe it away, Cole pressed his thumb to my mouth. He swiped the juice away with his finger and then put it in his own mouth. Lingeringly, like he could taste my lips on his. I couldn’t stop looking at his mouth.

Then we were kissing, hungry and hard and ceaseless, one bleeding into the next. I heard my glass tip and soda fizzle in the drain. The heel of his hand pressed my cheek; he still held the kiwi in his fingers. Everything smelled like paradise. My fingers grazed his collarbone, his ribs, his hipbones above his waistband.

It felt like it had been so long since I’d touched another person.

He was so real, his skin so warm, all of him ribs and salt and sweat. It felt like so long since I’d seen him. It felt like this was the only thing I had wanted for so many months.

He restlessly shoved the wreck of the table out of the way and pulled me closer. The kiwi joined the diet soda by the drain.

One of his palms was on my neck and the other gripped my thigh, half beneath my skirt. I couldn’t catch my breath. This was bad. I wanted him too much to stop myself, and I needed to stop, or — or — A phone began to shrill, urgent as a fire alarm.

Into my mouth, Cole said, very simply, “No.”

But the phone kept ringing. I couldn’t understand how it sounded so close until I realized there was a handset hanging beside the toilet.

Cole let out the most ragged breath imaginable.

I had thought I’d be relieved. I was not.

My fingers, which had been hooked on the top of his jeans, fell away as he stood up. He scrubbed a hand over his face before stepping out of the shower. With his foot, he kicked down the toilet lid and sat on it before taking the phone from the hook. His hair was still a mess, but now he somehow looked dressed.

“Da,” he said, rather coolly. His expression had sharpened; it was twitchier than the person who had greeted me, or the person who had invited me into the shower, or the person who had been kissing me. He listened for a moment. “Right. E-mail it to me, then. Oh, this is my excited voice. You have no idea.”

I started to pick up the things that had scattered across the shower. I turned the stool upside down and piled the bowls and eggshells in the cavity inside.

Then I stepped out and leaned against the sink as he stood in the middle of the bathroom, thumbing through his phone.

My heart was still thudding. He leaned beside me, his shoulder against mine, still looking at the phone.

My thoughts were a movie screen with nothing projected on it.