“No.” Riley leaned on the dresser and shook his head, looking totally confident in his logic. “Because when you’re dating, there is an understanding you both are thinking you’d like it to be more than friendship. So even though you’re not having sex, you want to and plan to.”

Say what? “Wait a minute. You don’t have sex when you’re dating?” I wasn’t sure I understood these categories. “But weren’t you planning to have sex with me just now?”

He shrugged, looking a little sheepish. “I might have been jumping the gun a little. Trying to skip a step.”

I rolled my eyes. “So having sex now, pre-relationship or dating, would have made us friends with benefits and we can’t have that.”

“No! We’re not actually friends, you know. You can’t be friends with someone you want to have sex with, you just can’t.”

“You’ve been saying we’re friends all week! So if we’re not really friends, then you want me to be a booty call, clearly.” I knew he didn’t, but his whole insistence that we define and label whatever the hell we were doing was completely irritating. And we weren’t friends? Weren’t people in relationships supposed to be friends? Or was I even more freaking clueless than I thought? And I didn’t like being offered friendship by him, something I had actually really liked and appreciated, and now have him trying to take it away.

“No, damn it. A booty call is someone you just have sex with, nothing else. No hanging out, no conversation. You just text and make plans to hook up.”

“I’m guessing you don’t spend the night either.”

“No, of course not.” He sounded frustrated, which was exactly how I felt.

“You’ve given this so much thought it scares me.” I tossed my magazine on the floor and myself on the bed. “You’re worse than a girl and I’m done with this conversation.”

I wasn’t sure why I felt bad, but I did. This felt like rules, like a way for him to control me. I knew in my head he didn’t mean that, he was just trying to be clear, but it just made me edgy, like I was right to stay away from relationships because I didn’t know how to do this. Why did it have to be so complicated?

When he came over and tried to sit on the bed with me, I waved him away. “Just leave it for now, Riley, seriously. I’m exhausted and I can’t do this.”

“Can’t do what?” he asked, voice exasperated. “We’re discussing us.”

“There is no us,” I told him, feeling cranky and bitter. “You just said we’re not even friends.”

“You’re twisting my words and you know it.”

“Go. Away.” I felt like I just might have a meltdown on him if he didn’t leave me alone. And when I melt down, I say mean things. They just fly out of my mouth like darts, and I can’t stop them. So it was better in the long run for both of us if he got the fuck out of my way.

For a heart beat, he hesitated. Then he just nodded briefly. “Fine. Good night.”

Rolling toward the wall, I closed my eyes and formed praying hands. “Night.”

Yes, I was conscious that I left the “good” part out.

What can I say?

He was the one who seemed to think I was deserving of my last name.

I knew that when I was hurt, I wasn’t all that nice.

And he had sliced me deep in several spots.

Which meant if he had the power to hurt me like that, I was falling hard for him, and it was better if we didn’t start down a path that was going to result in me being pathetic.

It was small comfort at the moment that I was preventing myself from future weight gain from heartbreak. Someday my ass would thank me, but now it just sucked.

After eight hours of sleep, I emerged from my room, hoping that Riley and I could just pretend the night before hadn’t happened and go back to our easy companionship.

But he wasn’t even home.

Which surprised me, because it was Sunday, and he didn’t have to work. We had been planning to finish the house cleanup in anticipation of his brothers coming home on Monday. I poked around, but there was no note in the kitchen, no text on my phone from him. He just wasn’t there, and empty, the house felt lonely. Which was dumb, because I’d been alone in the house before, but this was different. It felt forlorn in the aftermath of our fight, if you could call it that.

After eating a yogurt and drinking a soft drink, I showered and decided that Riley or not, I was going to finish the job I’d started. For ten minutes, I Febrezed the shit out of the couch to get the smell of smoke out of it. I dumped the ashtray in the trash bin out back and after rinsing it with the hose, set it on the picnic table. The smoking lounge in the living room was closed as far as I was concerned.

Then I took the pictures we had printed from his phone at the drugstore as eight-by-ten-size prints for less than twenty bucks, and the roll of bright blue polka dot duct tape I had bought, and started to hang them in the hallway. There was no way we could afford to buy frames for eight pictures, so I had figured the decorative duct tape would have to do. It would look like a design choice, not cheap.

It looked fantastic, I have to say, a neat row of black-and-white family shots all down the hallway, moments of joy and togetherness. I was proud of having giving the Mann brothers a nicer environment to live in, to display their unique pictures on the wall, to give them a visual sense of what they already knew. But at the same time, it made me felt lonely all over again. Riley had insisted on printing our mustache shot, since he said it was my hard work that was saving his ass, and I deserved to be on the wall, but now it felt out of place. Even though I put it last, right before the door to Riley’s bedroom, where the boys would never really see it, it still felt like I was intruding among the shots of Tyler and Jayden and Easton goofing off, and Riley’s tattoo, cropped in tight.

Lonely didn’t sit well on me. It makes me do things I shouldn’t.

Like answer Bill’s random “want to hang out” text with “you should come over.”

Yes, I am that stupid.

But I couldn’t just wander around that house, alone, bored. There was nowhere to go. Robin was at her parents’ house for church and a Sunday dinner thing. I had no car, and no desire to figure out the bus schedule to take me wherever. I had nowhere to go. Riley could be home any minute or not until tomorrow. I had no idea where he was or why he’d left without a word.

Bill was offering a distraction. I was taking it.

Not that I had any intention of messing around with him—I was mixed up about my feelings for Riley, and anyway, Bill had shut the door on that part of our relationship.

Relationship. What a loaded word. One I’d never liked, and now, after the hot mess of the night before, absolutely hated.

I figured Bill could come over, help me hang the blinds in the living room, then we could leave and go to the movies or something.

But Bill didn’t know anything about hanging blinds. “What do I look like, a handyman?” he asked, dressed in plaid shorts and a polo shirt. “I’m a chemical engineering major.”

“Which is why you should know how to do this,” I said, shoving the instructions in his hand. “It’s all math and spatial acuity.”

“Forget it.” He didn’t even look at them. “I’m sure I could figure it out, but the answer is no.” Wiping his forehead, he fanned himself. “Fuck it, it’s hot in here.”

“You’re mean,” I said. But it was a halfhearted pout. Really, why the hell would he want to hang blinds in Riley and Tyler’s house? Sometimes I forgot that just because I wanted something to happen in the next five minutes, that didn’t mean anyone else shared my enthusiasm or narrow focus.

I also realized that I didn’t actually want Riley to come home and see Bill in the house. Regardless of how innocent it was, now that Bill was standing here, I knew it would not sit well with Riley.