“I had a quiet summer, which is exactly what I needed. You?”

“Brilliant.” Geordie lived in Inverness until he was sixteen, and occasionally his accent and slang give him away. “The internship went great. Seriously, beyond my wildest expectations. We won amnesty for four immigrants in danger of exportation to home countries where they’d have been killed, either for political protests or sexual orientation. Four in three months! The wheels of justice rarely spin so fast.”

Most young attorneys who return to law school for an LLM do it to make even more money; Geordie’s getting his LLM so he can better help people. I don’t regret breaking up with him, but it’s good to be reminded of what I liked about the guy in the first place.

Plenty of the eyes watching us are female. More than one woman at this party hopes to make sure I’m out of the picture with Geordie, so she’ll have a shot at climbing into the frame. He’s handsome—okay, adorable—with floppy brown hair, puppy-dog eyes, and a smile that can be warm, or sly, or both at once. With his white oxford shirt unbuttoned at the neck, sleeves rolled up, his frame looks less skinny, more wiry. He’s the ideal hero of a romantic comedy.

But my life isn’t a rom-com, and it never will be. That ship sailed long before Geordie came along.

Besides, standing within arm’s length of Geordie does less for me than just glancing across the room at Jonah Marks.

Again I look toward the corner where I saw Jonah last, but he’s not there. Did he leave the party already?

If he did, I ought to feel relieved. I don’t.

Time to focus on Geordie again. “Good for you,” I tell him, meaning it.

We chitchat about his time in Miami for a while, then go our own ways within the party. I manage to dodge Arturo’s old roommate, Mack, who always stares at my tits; he’s one of those jocks with a thick neck and square head, like a canned ham in a Longhorns T-shirt. For a while I get to talk with Kip, the department secretary in my section of the art department, but then he receives some urgent text that sucks him into the cell phone dead zone. Mostly, even though I ought to be mingling and meeting new people, I hang out with Carmen. We’re best friends for a reason, and besides, she has a new crush to describe in detail.

As for my crush—if you can use such an innocent word for what Jonah Marks does to me—I refuse to let myself look for him again. Nor does he seek me out. Either Jonah’s on the patio or he blew out of here early, because I don’t see him once.

What I do see is Geordie going back for a third glass of sangria.

And a fourth.

And a fifth. That’s assuming I didn’t miss any refills, and I might have.

It’s on the fifth sangria that Geordie stumbles into the coffee table. A few people’s drinks slosh onto the carpet, which makes Carmen swear under her breath; one of the candles rocks but doesn’t fall over to start a fire. Barely.

People laugh, but there’s an edge to it. Geordie’s drunker than anyone else at this party, by far.

“Hey,” I say to him as gently as I can. “Let’s get you some air.”

Even as she dabs paper towels against her carpet, Carmen defends Geordie. “It’s all right! The rug’s dark. It won’t even show.”

“No, Viv’s right. She’s right.” Geordie must be smashed; otherwise he’d never risk my wrath by calling me Viv. “We should all listen to—to Viv—a little more often.”

I get up and sling one of his arms around my shoulders. If he or anybody else misinterprets this, it’s on them.

“Why don’t I listen to you more?” Geordie stumbles against me, but I manage to keep us upright. “You’re always so smart.”

“That’s me. The genius. Come on.”

With my free hand I slide the glass door open and guide him onto the brick patio. Only a few people linger out there now, and I pay attention to none of them. Instead I get Geordie to the ice chest, where—amid several bottles of beer—I find a Dasani for him.

“Drink this, okay? You need to drink nothing but water the rest of the night. You should eat something too.”

Geordie clasps the bottle of water, but he doesn’t take a sip. Instead he gives me this sad smile. “I should’ve tried harder with you. I should’ve made it work.”

Is he going to cry? Damn, Geordie’s a sloppy drunk.

He just keeps talking. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be the partner you wanted me to be.”

“It’s okay. Really. Please drink some water.” I prop him against the patio table. Around us, a few people are snickering at Geordie; I’m still loyal enough to feel angry on his behalf.

“I mean, it’s for the best. I know that. I do. But it hurts sometimes, doesn’t it?” Geordie’s slurring now. “We should’ve had more fun while we could.”

“Less fun,” I say. “More water.”

Finally Geordie takes a sip, but it doesn’t shut him up for long. “I just couldn’t do that for you. Any of it. And, oh my God, I feel so bad about the rape thing—”

He did not say that. He did not start talking about this in public, at a party, with strangers standing around listening.

Except he did.

My face goes cold with shock, then hot with shame, as Geordie continues. “I mean, kink yay, right? Everybody should love kinks. And you get to have yours! You do. But it’s not my kink. At all. Playing rapist freaks me out. But I shouldn’t have been such a dumb cunt about it.”

“We’re not discussing this here,” I manage to say. “Please stop.”

It hits Geordie then, where we are and what he’s done. The impact gets through all the booze. He sucks in a breath. “Oh, fuck.”

I don’t want to look at the faces of the people standing around who just heard that, but I can’t help it. A few of them look shocked. Others look amused. That creeper Mack leers at me in a way that makes my skin crawl.

Worst of all is the one face that remains impassive—Jonah Marks, only a few feet away, who must have heard every word.

Four

Once, when I was thirteen, the bloody string of my tampon somehow hung out from the edge of my swimsuit. Jackson Overstreet—who I thought was so cute, with his blond hair and blue eyes, the boy I hoped would be the first guy ever to kiss me—he saw the string, pointed it out to everyone at my friend Liz’s pool party, and laughed the loudest of all. Given how many people were shrieking in laughter at once, that was a hard competition to win. Jackson won it hands down. Since then I’ve believed that moment would probably be the single greatest public humiliation I’d ever feel.

Turns out it wasn’t even close.

I stand at the edge of Carmen’s yard by the tall wooden fence. The noise and light of the party are as far away as possible, which isn’t nearly far enough. What I want most is to leave. But to leave, I’d have to walk through the crowd, and I’m not ready to do that yet.

Footsteps in the grass behind me make me cringe. When Arturo comes up beside me, though, his smile is kind. “You all right?”

This is Arturo; I can’t lie to him. “If ‘mortally embarrassed’ counts as all right.”

“Don’t be like that. Everybody gets a little crazy in the sack once in a while, you know? I could tell you a few stories, if Shay wouldn’t kill me afterward.”

I give him a crooked smile. Probably everyone else who heard Geordie thinks what Arturo thinks: that he was talking about a bad night of role-playing, a one-time thing. They have no idea how deep this goes for me. To them it’s a tremor, not an earthquake.

Arturo adds, “Geordie’s a dick. Carmen shouldn’t have invited him.”

“He was drunk. That’s all.” I push my bangs back from my forehead. The night is sultry—hot and humid. “I’ll take it up with him later. You guys stay out of it.”

Arturo holds up his hands, a gesture of surrender, but I can tell he’s not ready to let Geordie off the hook yet. My adopted younger brother is more protective than any real older brother could ever be. He’s slow to anger, but once he finally gets mad—watch out.