“Get your GED,” I said. “Go to college, if you want to. Start your own business. Walk dogs for a living. Take up painting. Travel the world. Christ, Sasha, you’re twenty-two. You have an entire lifetime ahead of you. You can do whatever the fuck you want.”

“It’s not that simple,” she said.

I rolled my eyes. “Yes, it is,” I said. “It’s exactly that simple. You’re just making excuses.”

She was quiet for a moment, resting against me. Then she said, “Yolanda’s sister told me she knows a guy who just took the GED. She said he would help me out. You know, like give me some pointers.”

“Do you know what I think?” I asked.

“What,” she said.

“I think we should go talk to Germaine, and tell her you’re quitting,” I said. “And then we can go back to your apartment, and eat dinner, and deal with that terrible bird of yours, and then look into registering you for a GED class. What do you think about that?”

“I think,” she said, “that that sounds like a life.”

16

July passed.

August came, and with it, a new job for Sasha at a cafe near her apartment. “The money sucks,” she said, when she told me she’d been hired, “but it’ll keep me out of trouble. I’ll get bored if I’m not working.”

“You could always be my sugar baby,” I said. “That’ll keep you busy. I’ll have you scrub the floor wearing one of those little French maid outfits and no underwear.”

“Dream on, buddy,” she said, laughing, but the next time she came over, she had a French maid costume in her bag.

That was a good night.

With Sasha working a more reasonable schedule, we were able to spend evenings and weekends together again. I introduced her to my parents, who—possibly forewarned by Will—mercifully refrained from asking how we had met. I even convinced her to take a long weekend with me at the house in the Hamptons, where we spent all three days drinking sangria and sunning ourselves on the deck. It turned out that she freckled delightfully with a little bit of sun.

Life, in short, was very, very good.

And then Will, damn him, had to go and ruin everything.

He called me one morning when I was at work. I was deep into a stack of paperwork, and I answered without thinking. “Hello,” I said.

“Hey, it’s Will,” he said, and I silently cursed myself for answering. Will was chatty, and phone conversations with him were invariably prolonged and difficult to end. “Do you have a few minutes?”

“Not really,” I said, knowing it wouldn’t make a difference.

“Whatever, you can spare some time to talk to your favorite brother,” he said, as I had known he would.

“You’re my only brother,” I said.

“I’m not going to dignify that with a response,” he said. “So, okay, you’re going to think this is crazy, but I’m thinking about moving in with Yolanda.”

“You’re right,” I said, making a mental note to call his AA sponsor. Erratic behavior wasn’t a good sign. “That’s insane.”

“Okay, I know, but hear me out. It’s just a trial run. To see how things go. I won’t give up my apartment. But I really think she’s the one, Alex. I’ve never felt this way about anyone, not even Natalie. And she doesn’t want to live with a stranger after Sasha leaves, and this is probably—”

“Wait,” I said. “Back up. What do you mean, after Sasha leaves?”

“You know,” he said. “When she moves back to Virginia.”

“When she what,” I said, my heart dropping like a stone.

On the other end of the line, Will was silent for a moment. “She didn’t tell you,” he said.

“No,” I said. I felt numb. Dizzy. “I haven’t heard anything about this.”

Another pause, and then Will, giant coward that he was, said, “Okay, gotta go! Talk to you later!”

He hung up before I could respond.

I set my phone down and turned to stare blankly out the window.

Sasha was leaving?

I didn’t get much work done for the rest of the day. I tried, but my mind was elsewhere. After a meeting in which I took copious notes without actually hearing or processing a single word, my mother pulled me aside and said, “Darling, is everything okay?”

“Fine,” I said. I had the sensation of observing myself from a distance. My body moved and spoke without my intervention. I was simply a witness.

“Well, you didn’t say a word in that meeting,” she said, “and I was under the impression that you had fairly strong feelings about the Ironbound merger.”

“I’m still in the fact-gathering stage,” I said. A total lie: I had long since done my homework. “I’ll discuss my findings when I’ve reached a meaningful conclusion.”

“All right,” she said, still looking doubtful. “Why don’t you come over for dinner tonight? You can bring Sasha, if you’d like.”

“I’ll think about it,” I said. My mouth moved. I smiled reassuringly. “I may work late, though.”

After a few more attempts to get me to spill my guts, my mother gave up and went back to her office. Nothing I had told her was the truth. I wouldn’t be working late that night, and there was absolutely no chance of me going to my parents’ for dinner, with Sasha or without her. Sasha and I had made plans to try a new Vietnamese place near my apartment, but I had every intention of jettisoning those plans in favor of getting Sasha to explain to me what in God’s name Will had been talking about.

The afternoon dragged by until 5, when I finally felt that I could justify cutting out. Sasha was coming over at 6:30. I texted her from the subway platform and told her to come by as soon as she could. I didn’t see the point in delaying the inevitable.

My doorbell rang a few minutes after I got home, and then Sasha was at my door, smiling, wearing a sundress, her hair tumbling loose over her shoulders. She was lovely, and already leaving me.

“Hey!” she said. “Are you starving? Do you want an early dinner? I’m not super hungry yet, but I can just have some spring rolls and maybe eat a snack later. How was your day? We had the weirdest dude come in today. He spent like fifteen minutes trying to get Clara’s number…” She chattered happily as she moved around the apartment, setting her purse down on the sofa, opening the fridge to take out the water pitcher.