Ellis framed my face with her hands. “Why did you leave last time?”

“It was too intense.” I combed my fingers into her hair, leaning closer. “But when I was alone I couldn’t breathe. Everything feels like drowning except you. You’re my oxygen.”

“We have to talk about this. For real.”

“Can we not and pretend we did?”

“Yeah, sure. Because normal people talk about their relationship, and we’re obviously not—”

I cut her off with a kiss.

It was light, halting, because I wasn’t sure it was okay, only that looking at her made my chest ache, made me feel the stark hollowness in my lungs, that place where I was unfilled. But once her mouth was on mine, warm silk parting against my lips, I was certain. This was right. This was air and light and life. I pushed her against the couch, kissing her harder. My hair tangled across my eyes and my knee slid between hers and I wanted every inch of our skin to touch, to totally connect. Her legs tightened around my thigh. She pulled me close but held my face, stopping. Ran her fingers against my mouth. I kissed them, felt her heart slamming like a sledge beneath mine.

“What are we doing?” she whispered.

“Not fighting it anymore.”

“Not like this, Vada. I want this, but it has to be real. And you’re not ready.”

“You started it last time.”

She slipped out from under me and got to her feet. Flushed, palms upraised. “Let’s call a truce.”

I sat up calmly. “A kissing truce?”

“An everything truce. Tabula rasa. Start over.”

“We can never really start over, Elle.”

She turned solemn. “Well, let’s try. Let’s be friends for now, and see if we can even get along.”

“I thought you wanted more.”

“I do. But not the way it was. We have to do better.”

At that moment I just wanted the old us. I wanted to go back to how things were before that night. When we went to art exhibits and comic cons, rode trains across the city so we could sit shoulder to shoulder and scuff our sneakers and talk, moved in together because not seeing each other every day was unbearable. Then we hooked up with people we didn’t love so we could break up and console each other, cuddle on the couch in pajamas and watch Netflix all day, as friends. Just friends. The pretense wore thinner until one day, we stopped pretending. Then we were best friends with benefits.

That was my naivete. There was a reason it didn’t work out.

“Okay.” I stood and cupped her shoulders. “Just friends. But you’re still my prince, always.”

The look in her eyes made me shiver. It seemed so sad.

We couldn’t really go back to square one. Couldn’t undo our closeness. It was mixed-up forever, one part friendship, one part something else. So I put my arms around her, and though she stiffened she let me hug her, then returned the embrace, softening. No words needed. Just her head on my shoulder, and her cheek to my cheek, and her heart against mine.

—7—

No sign of Blue for days. It bothered me more than I cared to admit.

I idled in my chat room, half-assing a striptease, waiting for him. These other guys with their monotonous, simplistic needs began to bore me. Show me your pussy. Pull the tie tighter. Moan my name when you pretend to come. So mundane. I felt like an animal in a cage being stared at by other animals, all of us anonymous, mindless, interchangeable.

I used to take comfort in the mindlessness. In switching my brain off and going to town. Now I zoned out, thinking of a boy who made me feel different. Who made me laugh and feel smart and sexy and irresistible. He wanted to fuck me, but he wanted my mind, too, in a way that was both unsettling and exhilarating. These other guys didn’t come close.

My viewer count dipped. They sensed my disinterest.

Finally I logged off and went downstairs. Ellis sat alone in the dining room, the pale blaze of her laptop painting only her face and hands, like some apparition reaching out of the darkness. I touched her and her knees banged the table.

“I need your help¸ spaz,” I said.

“With what?”

“Reconnaissance.”

She squinted. “Is this about Max?”

“Nothing gets past that big brain of yours. Come be lookout while I poke around.”

“Inside his house?”

“Objections?”

“He has a gun. You don’t break into the house of a gun owner.”

“He’s not going to shoot us. I’d bet my life on it.” I squeezed her shoulder. “Max is looking into those reports for a scapegoat. He doesn’t want it to be a suicide—he wants to blame someone else.”

And he knows, I thought. That I’m holding a secret.

But so was he. If I found his out first, maybe I could keep mine.

Elle’s brow creased.

“Just trust my gut on this,” I said.

In the skiff she tried to convince me to turn back. I rowed steadily, ignoring her protests. But a few hundred feet out, my right arm lit up like a live wire and I had to stop and grit my teeth and listen to Ellis count my breaths. In, hold. Out, hold. I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from crying, filled my mouth with the sweet tang of pennies. Don’t see me like this, I thought. Don’t see me diminished.

Then we sat side by side and rowed in tandem. Somehow, it was perfect: my strength, her dexterity, our hands and hearts falling into one rhythm.

Peaks Island rose before us, a black skull protruding from vexed water. Whitecaps skittered over the surface like agitated thoughts, swelling, smashing, dissolving into sizzling foam. Off in the distance lighthouses trailed skeleton fingers across the sky. We dragged the skiff up the shore over seashells and glassy pebbles. Something bolted through the trees, a zipper of noise ripping through the underbrush and dying as abruptly as it began. We stared at each other, the whites of our eyes glowing palely.

“Just an animal,” I whispered.

In the woods she took my hand. The darkness had that hallucinatory Ernst quality where shadows swirled and twisted and everything became a face if you looked at it too closely. Elle’s hummingbird pulse fluttered against my palm.

We split up at the house. I called her phone and left the line open.

“There’s a light on.” I circled to the west. “First floor. Living room, I think. Try to look in from the porch.”

“Okay.”

“Car’s here. So’s the boat. He’s either inside or on foot.”

Scrapes and creaks from the phone. “Laptop in the living room. But I don’t see him now.”

“Stake it out. Maybe he went to the bathroom.”

“Okay.” Her voice was breathy, nervous.

Max’s forty-foot cruiser yacht stood parked on a trailer behind the garage. I climbed the stern ladder and monkey-walked down the gunwale till I reached the garage roof. Then I scrambled up the shingles, fingertips skidding over asphalt tiles. Below me the ceiling timber moaned. I crouched beneath a second-story window.

“Vada? You okay?”

“Yep. How’s the stakeout?”

“No sign of him yet.” She paused and I heard the frown in her voice. “There’s something weird about . . .”

I set the phone down on the windowsill, dug my nails beneath the frame, and heaved. Pain fired up my shoulder like a gunshot. Grimace. Breathe. Again.

“. . . sort of creepy. Maybe we should . . .”

Again. The frame screeched.

“Vada? Are you there?”

Finally the sash flew upward, rattling. I snatched my phone and slipped into the house. “Sorry. Putting you on speaker. Be quiet a sec.” I flicked on the flashlight app.

Before me was a teenage boy’s bedroom: captain’s bed with tartan quilt, a row of baseball caps on pegs, band posters—Queens of the Stone Age, alt-J. Wicker hamper frothing over with dirty clothes.

Going on eight months, and Max still hadn’t touched them.

I snapped pics, then went to the desk.

“Vada—”