I know he’s worrying. I know something about him isn’t right. But I also know he’s never going to look up from the bread and say to me, Caro, can I tell you something?

An awkward sort of finality has settled between us tonight, and I think it must be because of that conversation at the apartment.

Maybe I’m wrong, though. Maybe it happened when he handed me the envelope full of money. The money changed something.

If West shared his own weed with friends, he’d be a guy who was fun to party with. Since he sells it to them, he’s a felon. That’s because of the money.

I’m supposed to be rich. He’s supposed to be poor. He gave me fifteen hundred dollars, and now something is different between us, but he won’t tell me what, and I won’t ask.

I’m not brave enough to push him, but I wish he would tell me. I wish he would need me. Because I’m not sure how much longer I can stand to be the only one in this kitchen who will admit to being vulnerable. And I’m not sure, either, how much longer I’m going to need this—these late-night drives to the bakery, these hours with West working and the mixers going.

There is so much more we could be saying to each other, and aren’t.

Tonight the mixer’s rattling song sounds like a dirge, and I feel nothing but grief. I woke up from a nightmare to come here—a dream where I was out on the rugby field in a nightgown, wading through a thick fog, and I couldn’t find something I needed, couldn’t hear anyone calling for me. I felt irrevocably lost.

This night—this moment—this is the end of something, and we’ve failed at it.

“I’m going to miss you,” I tell him.

He’s got his back to me. Without responding or even acknowledging that I spoke, he turns up the mixer to high. It bangs around so loudly, I can’t hear the music. I cover my ears and listen to the beating of my heart with my eyes closed. When I open them, it’s because his hand is on my thigh, and he’s standing right in front of me, filling my whole field of vision.

His eyes are silvery-blue, cast into shadow by his indrawn eyebrows, startling and intense.

Krishna and Quinn are right—West is always touching me.

I always feel it.

His hand on my thigh makes me throb. Between my legs. My heart. My throat.

Everywhere.

Stupid girl.

When he moves his hand, I clutch at it. I overlap our fingers, mine on top of his, and press down, hard.

West looks at our hands, and he sighs. “What am I supposed to do about you? I think you’d better tell me, Caro, because I don’t have a fucking clue.”

I gaze at the knob of his wristbone. At the dark hair on his forearms, the divot of his throat, the patch beneath his lip where he missed a few hairs when he shaved.

His mouth. His eyes. His mouth.

Always his mouth, wide and smart-alecky, generous and withholding.

I wait for West’s mouth to make words I’m never going to hear.

I’ll miss you.

I care about you.

I don’t want you going out with that guy, because I want you with me. I want us to be more than this.

I want to say, Tell me everything, West. Please.

But in the morning I’m going to drive home and see my father. Whatever it is West might have to say, tonight isn’t the right night for him to say it, and I’m not the right person for him to say it to.

It’s not just him. It’s me. I’m not brave enough.

My fingertips skate over the shapes of his face. The arch of his eyebrow and the scar that bisects it. The curve of his ear. The lush fullness of his mouth.

I want to breathe in when he exhales, rest against his body, wrap my legs around his waist, and take him inside me.

I don’t know how to get rid of this.

I don’t know how to give him up.

The oven timer beeps. West steps away from me and turns it off. Opens the door. Takes out the bread.

The whole rest of the night, he keeps his distance.

In the morning, I get in my car and put sixty miles between us, but it’s not far enough.

I don’t know how far I’d have to go for it to be far enough.

Don’t get involved, I told myself in the beginning. She’s not your problem.

But I was already involved, even then. By Thanksgiving, I was so involved with Caroline, I almost couldn’t stand to see her.

Everything I told her was a lie.

We weren’t going to be friends, I’d promised. But what else do you call it when you text somebody a million times a day and look forward to seeing them even though you just fucking saw them?

What do you call it when you know when somebody has class and what material their next test is about, and they know when you’re going to be working and how many hours it is since you slept, so they bring you all your favorite junk food to help keep you going?

Caroline and I were friends.

I was lying about it.

I told her I wasn’t going to touch her, but I touched her every chance I got. Brushed my arm against hers. Leaned into her with my knee. When she turned her back, I checked out her ass and thought about how it would feel in my hands. When she leaned over the table, kneading, I looked down her shirt.

I’d find reasons to get inside her personal space. I’d watch her skin get pink and patchy, and I’d love it.

I wasn’t any kind of saint. Even though I couldn’t have her, I did my best to make her want me. I made sure she was thinking about me, and I didn’t stop when I found out she wanted to ask out some guy she’d met playing rugby.

I ramped it up.

I treated her like she belonged to me, even though I wouldn’t have her and I wouldn’t let her have me, either.

I told Caroline to admit how she was feeling—how she was really feeling—but when she’d ask me, “What’s on your mind?” I wouldn’t say, I’m worried about my mom because she said her back went out and I think she must be missing shifts at the prison. If she gets fired, she’s going to get whiny, and Bo’s never been around her when she’s like that. He might dump her for being a useless drag—which she is, I swear, my mother whines like nobody else alive—and if that happens, I’ll have to go back home.

What would be the point?

I was two different people, and only one of them was real. The real West Leavitt lived in a trailer in Silt, Oregon. He talked to me all day long. Check on your mom. Make sure she gets groceries so Frankie’s got something decent to eat. Pick up another shift at the library, because you never know. You just never know.

Whereas the guy I was in Iowa—he was the clothes I put on to get where I needed to go. He was me, pretending to be the kind of person Caroline has been every minute of her life.

Whoever you are when you’re born, you can’t just shake that off. We like to pretend we can. That’s the American dream, right? No limits. But the truth is, you might get rich, but you can’t buy the way rich people are. You can’t just put the right clothes on and belong. You’re still going to think like a poor kid, dream like one, want like one. You’ll still flinch every time another student asks you, So what does your dad do? or Where are you going for break?

It’s hard work, teaching yourself not to flinch. Learning to be someone you’re not.

That’s what I was doing at Putnam. I was working. I wasn’t there for laughs, or to party, or to find the girl I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. I was there to make the rest of my life happen, and it was a full-time project.

People like Caroline don’t have to worry about the groceries or the rent. They can assume all that shit’s taken care of, and then they just have to figure out what they want and go for it.