That night they treated me like a china doll, poor dear Alexis with the broken life.

Then we were counting down to New Year’s, and I thought, This will be the first year without Ty in it in 3, 2, 1 . . .

Steven leaned in to kiss me and I flinched away.

“I’m sorry,” I remember I said. “I can’t.”

“It’s okay,” he said. “I get it.”

“No, you don’t.” I wished he would stop being so understanding with me, for once. “I don’t mean this. I mean us. I can’t do it anymore.”

So many emotions crossed his face, but he swallowed them all down. “Okay,” he said, his voice rough with the words he was holding back. “I know things are bad right now, so it makes sense that you need space. I can give you space.”

“This isn’t about Ty,” I said. “I’d be doing this even if Ty hadn’t died.”

Hurt in his brown eyes then. A universe of hurt.

“Oh” was all he said.

“It was a good experiment, but . . .” I couldn’t look at him. Out the window snow was falling in fat flakes, the kind of snowstorm that makes everything seem muted. “I’ve concluded that you and I aren’t compatible. In the long run, I mean. I think you’re a stellar guy, I do, but it was never going to work between us.”

I sounded like a Vulcan. It was the lamest breakup speech ever, in the history of mankind.

All around us there was music and laughing, his little sister and cousins shrieking in a game of tag, drinks clinking and resolutions being made, a cacophony of noise, but all I could hear was the way Steven caught his breath.

“This is bad timing. I’m sorry. I should go,” I said, and fled for the front door.

He found my jacket in the heap of coats on the guest-room bed, and held it out for me as I slipped my arms into the sleeves. Then he followed me outside to where the Lemon was parked down the street and helped me scrape the snow off my windshield. He said nothing the entire time. He didn’t rage or argue or try to assign blame.

But when at last I met his eyes over the roof of my car, he held my gaze. There was snow in his hair, and his cheeks were red, the streetlight reflecting in his glasses.

“Why?” he asked.

“Why?”

“Why wouldn’t it work between us?”

I didn’t know the answer. I couldn’t tell him about the text, so I floundered for some reasonable lie. “Do you know that there are different types of sperm?”

He stared at me. “You’re breaking up with me because of my sperm? But you don’t—we haven’t—you have no basis for—”

“No. Not your sperm, specifically. Just . . . there are different types of sperm. I read about it. There are some sperm that are meant to swim as quickly as possible up the . . . well, you get the idea; they’re meant to sprint for the finish line, so to speak. But there are also sperm that are supposed to curl up along the way and die. Do you know why they would do that?”

“I have a feeling you’re going to tell me.”

“So they can block other sperm. They’re like defensive-linemen sperm. Kamikaze sperm.”

“Fascinating,” Steven said wryly.

“So you know what that means?”

He thought for a minute before I saw the answer flare in his eyes. “It means that we’re biologically engineered to be nonmonogamous. Females aren’t designed to have one single mate. Not if our sperm is meant to compete.”

“Exactly.”

He ran a hand through his hair, dusting off snow. “That doesn’t have anything to do with us, Lex. This isn’t biology.”

Then I told him the biggest lie of all.

“I didn’t mean it. What I said that night. I got caught up for a minute, but . . . I don’t believe in love. I believe in biology.”

His eyes dropped from mine immediately. He started backing away toward the warm, welcoming light of his house and his family and his future.

“Drive safe, Lex,” he murmured.

That was the last thing he said to me, as my boyfriend.

Drive safe.

27.

THIS WEEK WITH DAD IT’S THE OUTBACK. He’s late. I sit at a table drinking strawberry lemonade for twenty minutes before I take out my phone, but I don’t call him. I stare at the screen and think about calling him. I resent him for making me think about calling him.

Finally he shows up, jogging toward me in the darkened restaurant.

“Sorry,” he says as he slides into the booth across from me. “Megan wanted—” He stops himself. He remembers I don’t want to hear about Megan.

I suck down more lemonade as he takes off his coat and gloves and picks up the menu.

“How was your week?” he asks.

“Fantastic,” I deadpan.

“I know things must have been difficult, what with the Murphy boy. It’s such a shame.”

I stare at him. Yes, a shame.

“You got into MIT, I hear,” he says. “You’re making plans.”

He doesn’t look thrilled. Why doesn’t he look thrilled?

“How do you know that?”

“Your mother called me.”

A swallow of lemonade goes down the wrong pipe, and I cough. “Mom calls you?”

“From time to time. She’s worried about you, and she wants to discuss what to do with you.”

I continue coughing. “What to do with me?”