“Yeah. I’ve got a quiz tomorrow.”

“Need help with your verbs?”

“No, I’m good.”

“Are you staying long enough for me to teach you all the finer points of muffin glazing?”

“Probably not. I’ve got to write a response paper for Con Law, and I didn’t bring my laptop.”

“You should’ve. I like it when you write here.”

I do, too. He’s quiet when I need him to be quiet, and when I want a break he’ll teach me some bread thing. If I read him my draft out loud, he’ll suggest some change that sounds small but always ends up making the paper more concise, the argument stronger.

West is smart. Crazy smart. I had no idea—the one time I had a class with him, he didn’t talk.

It is possible he’s actually smarter than I am.

“Next week, then,” he says. “Tuesday you will learn the secrets of the glaze.”

I smile. I think he likes teaching me stuff nearly as much as he liked learning it in the first place. He’s almost insatiably curious. No matter what homework I’m doing, he’ll end up asking me fifty questions about it.

“Sounds good. Are you on at the restaurant this weekend?”

“Yeah. What about you, you got plans?”

I want to hang out with you. Come over Sunday, and we’ll watch bad TV.

Let’s go to the bar.

Let’s go out to dinner in Iowa City.

Sometimes I invent a life in which my being more than not-friends with West is a possibility. A life where we get to hang out somewhere other than a kitchen at midnight.

Then I mentally pinch myself, because, no, I want less scandal, not more.

“Bridget is trying to get me to go to that party tomorrow night.”

“Where’s that?”

“A bunch of the soccer players.”

“Oh, at Bourbon House?”

“Yeah, are you going?”

“I’ll be at work.”

“After you get off?”

He smiles. “Nah. You should go, though.”

When Bridget suggested it, the idea filled me with panic. A crush of bodies, all those faces I would have to study for signs of judgment, pity, disgust. I can’t have fun when I’m so busy monitoring my behavior, choosing the right clothes, plastering a just-so smile on my face and watching, watching, while the men in my head tell me I look like a whore and I should pick somebody already. Take him upstairs and let him suck my tits, because that’s all a slut like me is good for.

Bridget thinks I need to get out more, pick my life back up where I left it. Otherwise, Nate wins.

I see her point. But I can’t make myself want to.

I look at the corrugated soles of West’s boots, swinging a few feet from my face. At the way his knuckles look, folded around the edge of the table. The seam at his elbows.

If West were going to the party, I would want to.

“I might.”

“Do you some good,” he says. “Get shit-faced, dance a little. Maybe you’d even meet somebody worth keeping you busy nights so you’re not hanging around here harassing me all the time.”

He grins when he says it. Just kidding, Caro, that grin says. We both know you’re too fucked in the head to be hooking up with anybody.

Before I’ve even caught my breath, he’s hopped down and moved toward the sink, where he fills a bucket with soapy water so he can wipe down his countertops.

I look at my Latin book, which really is verbs, and I blink away the sting in my eyes.

Video, videre, vidi, visus. To see.

Cognosco, cognoscere, cognovi, cognotus. To understand.

Maneo, manere, mansi, mansurus. To remain.

I see what he’s doing. Every now and then, West throws some half-teasing comment out to remind me I’m not his girlfriend. He smiles as he tells me something that means, You’re not important to me. We’re not friends.

He pulls me closer with one hand and smashes an imaginary fist into my face with the other.

I know why he does it. He doesn’t want me to get close.

I don’t know why.

But I see. I understand.

I remain.

We’re a mess, West and me.

He cleans the tables off, his movements abrupt and jerky. Agitated. When he switches to dishes, he’s slamming the pans around instead of stacking them. He’s so caught up with the noise he’s making that when a figure appears at the back door, West doesn’t notice.

I do, though. I look up and see Josh there. He used to be my friend, before. Now I see him around with Nate. I think he’s going out with Sierra. He’s standing with his wallet in his hand, looking awkward.

“Hey, Caroline,” he says.

“Hey.”

West turns toward me, follows my eyes to the doorway. He frowns deeply and stalks toward the door. Josh lifts the wallet, and West kind of shoves it down and aside as he moves out into the alley, forcing Josh to step back. “Put your fucking money away,” I hear him say as the door swings closed. “Jesus Christ.”

Then the kitchen is empty—just me and the white noise of the mixer, the water running in the sink.

When he comes back in, he’s alone, his hand pushing something down deep in his pocket. “You didn’t see that,” he says.

Which is dumb.

I guess he thinks he’s protecting me. If I can’t see him dealing, I’m not an accessory. I’m the oblivious girl in the corner, unable to put two and two together and get four.

“Yes, I did.”

He levels this look at me. Don’t push it.

I haven’t seen that look since the library. It makes me dump my book on the floor and stand up, and when I’m standing I can feel it more—how my chest is still aching from the hurt of what he said a few minutes ago. How my heart pounds, because he hurt me on purpose, and I’m angry about it.

I’m angry.

He turns his back on me and starts to wash a bowl.

“What kind of profit do you make, anyway?” I ask. “On a sale like that, is it even worth it? Because I looked it up—it’s a felony to sell. You’d do jail time if you got arrested. There’s a mandatory minimum five-year sentence.”

He keeps cleaning the bowl, but his shoulders are tight. The tension in the room is thick as smoke, and I don’t know why I’m baiting him when I’m close to choking on it.

He’s right to try to protect me. My dad would have kittens if he found out I was here, with West dealing out the back door, selling weed with the muffins. He would ask me if I’d lost my mind, and what would I say to him? It’s only weed? I don’t think West even smokes it?

Excuses. My dad hates excuses.

The truth is that I don’t make any excuses for it. I turn myself into an accessory every time I come here and sit on the floor by West, and I don’t care. I really don’t. I used to. Last year I was scandalized by the pot.

Now I’m too busy being fascinated by West.

And then there’s the money. I think about the money. I wonder how much he has. I know his tuition is paid, because he told me, and that he caddies at a golf course in the summer, because I asked why he had such stark tan lines.

I imagine he’s paying his own rent, paying for his food, but as far as I can tell he doesn’t have any hobbies or vices. I can’t figure out why he works so many jobs and deals pot, too, if he doesn’t need all that money just to get by. And he must not, right? He must have more than he needs if he’s buying weed in large quantities and making loans.

“Drop it,” West says.

I can’t drop it. Not tonight. Not when the pain in my chest has turned to this burning, angry insistence. I’m too pissed at him, and at myself. “I’ll have to ask Josh,” I muse. “Or Krish. I bet he would tell me. I bet when people show up at your apartment, you don’t turn your back on Krish and make him sit alone while you deal outside on the fire escape.”

I’ve never been to his apartment. I only know about the fire escape because I drove by.

I’m possibly a little bit stalking him.

West drops the bowl in the sink and rounds on me. “What are you in a snit about? You want me to deal in front of you?”