“I cannot believe it was the same guy,” Caden said, cracking the top on his soda and leaning back in his chair. “What are the fucking chances?”

“I know,” I said, burying my face in my hands. The bustle of the cafeteria around us was nothing compared to the panicked, anxious tapdance that my thoughts had been doing since I’d gotten home from the con. “It’s awful.”

“Awful,” Caden said, tapping his chin. “Or, maybe, awesome?”

I looked up at him miserably. “How the hell could it be awesome? Not only did Nick find out I was lying about my age, he found out I was lying about pretty much everything. In the worst way possible. And if he doesn’t tell anyone about it, then I’m making him lie. He must hate me now.”

I knew it was stupid to be hung up on that part—Nick’s feelings for me didn’t have nearly the tangible effect on my life as, say, him telling Gwen would. But the certainty that I’d ruined any chance I ever had of Nick thinking I was a good person, let alone someone he could be interested in, was the part that hurt the most.

“Okay, well, maybe,” Caden said. “But if he doesn’t quit, and he doesn’t tell anyone—well, that just gives you more time to win him over.”

“Win him over?” I stared at Caden in confusion. “What part of ‘I lied to him and convinced him I’m completely untrustworthy’ did you miss? There’s no way to come back from that. Besides, I don’t see any scenario where he doesn’t quit.”

“But what did he actually say,” Aisling asked, swinging her backpack off her shoulder as she joined us at the lunch table. She dropped her sandwich and a bottle of water on the table, leaned forward, and gave me an aggrieved look. “I can’t believe you made me wait a whole 24 hours to find out.”

“Sorry. My mom was really on my case last night. She made me stay downstairs and off the phone from the minute I got home. She’s already worried I’m not going to try hard enough this semester.”

School had barely started—we hadn’t even done enough work to have grades in any of my classes—but that didn’t stop my mom from insisting that I had to get straight A’s in all of them. Which was frankly going to be impossible, given the fact that she’d overridden my guidance counselor’s suggestions and made sure I enrolled in all AP’s this year. AP English, sure. That made sense. AP Spanish, maybe. AP Euro was already stretching it, and there was no way in hell I should have been in AP Calc or Physics—but I was.

Wrenville College, where I wanted to go, was a small liberal arts school in the middle of nowhere, Minnesota. With a Quaker background and a quirky way of looking at higher ed, they cared a lot less about your grades than they did about your essays and critical thinking—and that went double for applying to their creative writing program. It was one of the best in the country, and pretty much all that mattered was the strength of the pieces you submitted.

Alums from Wrenville’s creative writing program had won Pulitzers, National Book Awards, the Man Booker Prize, and even a Nobel, I was pretty sure. It was the only place I’d ever wanted to go since I’d found out it existed, and if I didn’t get in, I’d go to Rutgers and they didn’t give a shit about me taking AP’s. But none of that mattered to my mom. She was determined to have a perfect son with perfect grades and a perfect acceptance record to the ten or so perfect colleges she’d picked out for me to apply to.

“Well, you’re here now, and she’s not, so spill,” Aisling said. “You went to talk to him and… what?”

“I don’t know,” I said, aware that my voice was practically a wail and unable to do a damn thing about it. “He just said ‘thank you for telling me’ and stared at me until I felt like he could see inside my brain, so I said, ‘yeah, no problem,’ and then ran away so I could go hyperventilate in a corner.”

“Nice, bro.” Caden grinned and I stuck my tongue out at him.

Aisling closed one eye and looked up at the ceiling like she was trying to work out a complicated math equation—or maybe that’s just the way I looked when I tried to figure out complicated math equations, which was pretty much everything we did in calc these days, but whatever.

“I guess it’s not the best response,” she said slowly. “But it’s not the worst one, either. Like, don’t you think if he’d absolutely decided to quit, he would have just told you?”

“Except that he did tell me that. On Friday. I don’t know what would have happened in the interim to make him change his mind.”

“Right, but like you said. He was still there on Sunday. That has to be a good sign, right?”

“Since when are you the optimistic one?” I frowned at her. “Aren’t you supposed to be the realist?”

“I am being realistic,” she said. “I’m not saying I’m not surprised. But, just going off of his actions, I feel like there’s just as much of a chance that Nick doesn’t quit as that he does.”

“That’s fucking helpful,” I grumbled. “How the hell am I supposed to make it till next Sunday now without knowing?”

“Well, knowing you, I’d say cheerfully, and with perfect good humor,” Aisling said, arching an eyebrow. I glared even harder and she rolled her eyes. “Honestly, Eli, I’d say the longer you go without hearing anything from Gwen or your parents, the better the chances are that Nick’s changed his mind and he’s staying. Maybe you’re more persuasive than you think.”

“Or maybe he wants to bang you more than you think,” Caden put in.

“Not helpful,” I barked at him—and jumped when Aisling said the same thing.

“Alright, alright.” Caden raised his hands defensively. “I’m just trying to offer a different perspective, but clearly it’s not welcome.” He swiped Aisling’s water bottle and took a defiant sip. “I guess I won’t even bother suggesting you just text him and ask.”

“I can’t text him!”

“Well, there you go—that’s why I’m not suggesting it.” Caden smiled and I groaned. “So,” Caden continued, “if you’re not going to be texting him, and you’re sure he doesn’t want to bang you, would you say you’re like, over him?”

“Are you kidding?” Aisling said. “He’s clearly not.”

“Hey, I could be,” I objected mutinously. “I mean, I’m not. But I could be. Why?”

“I was just thinking, it’s been a while since we went into the city. And since you’re definitely not off the market, there’s no reason you can’t come back in with me, right?”

“Don’t you think he’s learned his lesson about meeting strangers in New York by now?” Aisling asked.

“Excuse you, I can speak for myself, thank you very much,” I said primly. But she did kind of have a point. “I don’t know, Caden, I’m just not really sure I’m in the mood.”

“Right,” Caden said. “Which is why we should go in and find you a distraction that gets you in the mood.”

“You just want me to come in so that I can be on murder-watch again,” I complained.

Caden wiggled his eyebrows. “Hey, two birds, one stone. Or maybe two birds, two stones, if you find someone to, you know, not get murdered by. But I suppose you’d rather sit here and waste away in love sick silence, pining over a guy you can’t even bring yourself to communicate with.”

I glared at him. It was going to be a long week.

And it was. It passed like a smudge of ink across a blank white page, a slow smear towards the weekend. I didn’t retain anything from class, except that Nancy, my English teacher, asked if I’d been working on anything for my Wrenville application, and told me she’d be happy to read over anything I was thinking about submitting.

I didn’t have anything yet, and I couldn’t seem to get my brain to focus on anything other than Nick, and what was going to happen on Sunday night at youth group. That was my excuse for bombing a physics quiz too, though I probably would have failed it anyway, to be honest.

Aisling maintained that no news was good news.

“Think about it,” she told me Friday afternoon as we watched a movie in Spanish. “If Nick had talked to Gwen, even if he didn’t bring you up, Gwen would have to tell us, wouldn’t she? Because she’d be scrambling to find another advisor for the year, and we’re the co-chairs, so she wouldn’t leave us out of the loop.”

“She wouldn’t leave you out of the loop,” I corrected her. “You’re the one who actually does stuff. I just go where you tell me and be nice to the freshman.”

“And you’re very good at it too,” Aisling said, patting my head with a smile. I scowled at her, but she ignored it. “Anyway, she hasn’t gotten in contact, so I’m pretty sure whatever you said on Saturday night convinced him to stay.”

My stomach turned a somersault. “I guess so.”

“I thought that was what you wanted,” Aisling said. “Eli, come on, you’re killing me here.”

“I do want it,” I protested. “I just—it’s like, tiers of wanting. Yes, I want Nick not to quit, but if I stop worrying about that because he’s sticking around, then that just means I get to worry about the next rung up the ladder, which is what he’s going to say to me, or if he’s even going to acknowledge I exist, or if I’m going to spend the whole year with him ignoring me and…” I looked up. “I sound like an idiot, don’t I?”

“You sound like someone with a crush.”

“Those things aren’t mutually exclusive.”

“No, but I don’t know, Eli. At least he’s staying, right? Probably? Just take it one day at a time.”

I tried to take her advice, but by Saturday night, when I finally broke free of my mom’s enforced homework jail-time, I felt like I was going to explode with unspoken worry. I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. Was Caden right, after all? Could I just text Nick and ask for an update?

No. Definitely not. Right? Nick undoubtedly did not want further contact from me. And if I were being honest, I didn’t just want to reach out because I wanted an answer about whether Nick was quitting. What I really wanted was some confirmation that he didn’t totally hate me. Or, honestly, just a reminder that he knew I existed.

Ridiculous. It’s not like he’d forgotten this mess. But I just ached, somehow. Thinking about Nick being out there, and not being able to talk to him. I picked up my phone and started to type.

Hey, it’s Eli. I was just—

No. Nick would know it was from me. Unless he’d deleted my number—I supposed he could have, in some bid to be honest. He probably didn’t want my name in his phone now, did he?

Hey, it’s me—

That would be safe enough, like if he were next to Gwen when he got the text or something. But did it imply a level of intimacy that would bother Nick?

Hey, I was just wondering if you’d talked to Gwen?

Except everything Aisling had said was still true, so that text was pointless.

Hey, I just wanted you to know, I haven’t told anyone else, and I promise I’ll keep my mouth shut and keep my distance.

But the very act of texting him was the opposite of keeping my distance.

In the end, the only honest thing I could think to say was this:

Hey. I can’t stop thinking about you. And this weekend. I’m so sorry. I just want some kind of reassurance you don’t hate me? But I also know I have no right to ask for that? And I know that by texting you I’m making a big deal out of something you wish would just disappear, so I’ll just… show myself out.

Yeah, nope. There was no way I could send him that, or any other text. I’d just have to wait.

In the end, it was almost a let-down.

Aisling picked me up to drive me over to church like she always did. I wasn’t allowed to touch my dad’s car, and my mom drove her minivan to book club on Sunday nights. I spent the entire car ride envisioning some kind of cataclysmic event when I walked into the youth group room. Nick staring at me in shock, a thunderclap going off above us, someone—probably me, let’s be real—being unable to breathe.

But when we actually got there and walked in? The room was half-full and Nick was there, all disheveled and bookish-looking with a forest green cardigan and a pencil shoved behind his ear, and he turned and straightened from where he’d been talking to Sarah, one of the incoming freshman, and smiled at me and Aisling and asked if we knew where the easel was. Aisling said she could show him, she walked out of the room towards the supply closet without so much as a sympathetic smile for me, and Nick followed her out without a second glance.

I couldn’t decide if I was relieved or offended.

Relieved, I supposed, on a practical level. Thunderclaps aren’t exactly subtle, and the whole reason I’d hoped Nick hadn’t quit was that I didn’t want to have to go explaining things to anyone, parents or otherwise. Or, well, that was one of the reasons.

But seriously—nothing? Not even a quick glance in my direction, a swallow, and then a not-quite-subtle-enough aversion of his eyes? No stutter when he said, ‘Hey, Eli?’ No awkwardly putting his hands in his pockets as he asked us how we wanted to get started?

It was almost rude, to be honest. I’d been dying all week, wondering how tonight was going to go, and the guy just… treated me like an equal and gave me my space?

How dare he?

I watched him surreptitiously as we did check-in, everyone going around in a circle and talking about their week and how they were feeling tonight. I couldn’t figure out how he managed it, but Nick neither stared at me uncomfortably when it was my turn, nor did he stare down at the carpet and pluck at his sleeves nervously. He didn’t even have the grace to flush when I said I’d been feeling a little stressed all week.

And then, when we split up into groups later on, and I was leading one on starting a letters- and books-to-prisoners program, Nick came around and sat with us for fifteen whole minutes and he didn’t stumble over his words or seem like he was having trouble breathing at all. He even told me he thought it was a cool project, and that I’d done a great job organizing it, and I was the one who flushed. It wasn’t fair!

“It makes sense, though,” Aisling said with a smile. “Eli’s an amazing writer, so of course he’d come up with a project like this.”

“Oh, really?” Nick cocked his head to the side and looked at me with either actual interest or the best faked-interest I’d ever seen in my life. “That’s really cool, I didn’t know that. Fiction, or nonfiction, or—”

“Fiction,” I stammered, my cheeks coloring even more.

Dammit, he had no right to look at me like I was just another teenager he was trying to encourage. No right at all to make me feel all warm and special with his smile. He was supposed to be uncomfortable around me, not easy-going and curious about my hobbies.

“But, like, good fiction,” Aisling insisted. “You should ask him to let you read some of his stuff sometime. It’ll blow you away.”

She beamed at the two of us. I wanted to strangle her.

“It’s not that good.”

“It is so.” Aisling glared. “He’s just being modest. He’s going to go to college for creative writing, and become a famous novelist and live in Buenos Aires and be far too fabulous to keep in touch with any of us, but we’ll all get to say we knew him back when.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Nick said, grinning. “What school?”

I wanted to sink into the carpet—and considering how much apple juice and graham cracker crumbs and bodily fluids that carpet had absorbed over the decades of Sunday school that had taken place in this room, that was saying something.

“Wrenville College,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper. “But it’s not—I mean, I probably won’t get in.” God, now I was the one picking at the cuffs of my shirt.

“Like I said, modest.” Aisling grinned, probably because she knew how much I wanted to kill her, and didn’t care a bit.

“That’s really great, Eli,” Nick said, and he sounded so genuine, so sincere that I wanted to claw my eyes out.

The rest of the night passed without incident—you know, if you discount the fact that I spent it wishing I could cease to exist, or at the very least vacate the corporeal plane. I thought I was worried about Nick hating me, but somehow Nick being nice to me, Nick treating me like anybody else, was even worse.

The meeting ended at 8:30 and I jumped up as soon as the minute hand hit the six.

“Jesus, Eli, chill,” Aisling said, still sitting in a circle with everyone else. “I was gonna go over what we had planned for next week.”

“Yeah, it’s—it’s fine,” I said, acutely aware of how weird I was being. I couldn’t bring myself to even look at Nick. “It’s just—I have that… thing. I’ll—you—you tell them. I’ll meet you in the car.”

I darted out of the room as fast as my feet would carry me, but I’d only just made it to the door to the parking lot when I heard a voice call, “Eli, hey, wait up!”

My heart in my throat and my stomach sinking—really, not a pleasant combination, I don’t recommend it—I turned and watched Nick jog down the hall to meet me. I walked a few feet out into the parking lot. For some reason, I felt like I might need a little extra air for this conversation.

“What?” I said, bracing myself for I didn’t even know what. More praise? Censure? Either way, I didn’t think I could handle it.

“Hey,” Nick said, breathing a little heavily as he caught up with me.

His cheeks were a little rosy—finally—and I hated how good it made him look. Nick could probably make feverish and full of boils look good too, though, so I should probably just get used to it.

“Eli, I know—”

“I just wanted to say—”

We started talking at the same time, then both cut off abruptly. I waited, warily, wondering what to do next.

“You go,” Nick said, making it sound like a generous offer, and not like an invitation to stretch my neck out for the guillotine.

“I just…” I sighed. “I’m glad you didn’t quit. That’s all I was going to say.”

All I could bring myself to say, anyway. All I trusted myself to say.

“Thanks,” Nick said slowly. “I thought about it. And I still don’t know if it’s right. But Gwen says she really needs the help this year, and I—well, I wanted to thank you. For—you know.”

Promising not to salivate over you or try to jump your bones in public?

“Yeah.” I could feel my cheeks heating up again, and I looked away.

It was only mid-September, but it had rained while we were inside and there was the hint of a chill in the air. I could smell woodsmoke somewhere, drifting through the mist. I stared out at the parking lot, waiting for Nick to say something, anything, and tell me what to do next.

“Someone’s having a fire,” he said after a minute. “Woodsmoke.”

“I love the way it smells.”

I turned back to Nick, my mouth hanging open in surprise, as I heard his words echo mine.

“Really?” Nick cocked his head to the side, looking delighted. “Me too.”

“I don’t know, it always makes me feel…” I struggled to put it into words. “Like the world is full of possibility. Like I want to know everything about the person who lit that fire. What their story is, and where they’re going. It makes me feel connected, I guess, to something bigger than just me.”

Nick smiled, and it was a delicate smile this time, like he wasn’t even aware it was on his face.

“That’s beautiful,” he said, his voice gentle, and I immediately wanted to disappear again.

“I’m, um, sorry for fucking everything up,” I said, kicking at a rock so I didn’t have to look at Nick’s face anymore. He was too fucking handsome, and I couldn’t handle it. “I really am glad you’re not quitting. I didn’t want to ruin your life.”

“You could never do that,” Nick said, so softly that I wasn’t sure I’d heard him correctly. “Anyway, I should get back inside. I’ll see you.”

He was gone, before I thought to ask what the scent of woodsmoke meant to him.

“Sit, honey. I want to talk to you about something.”

My mom pointed peremptorily to a chair at the dining room table, then took one across from it. She looked at me expectantly.

“Um. Is this going to take long? I actually have to—”

“Eli, just sit.”

I sighed and made my way to the table.

I didn’t actually have to do anything. It was the first Sunday of October and I didn’t have youth group for another three hours. But I knew the look in my mom’s eyes well enough to know I wasn’t going to enjoy this conversation.

“There’s no need to sigh like that,” she said, smoothing a folded piece of paper across the linen tablecloth.

“Yeah, sorry. You’re right.” I pulled out the chair and sat. It was best not to disagree when she was like this. It only made her think I was being recalcitrant in addition to whatever other faults she’d found. “So, um, what was the thing you wanted to talk about?”

My mom frowned as though she wasn’t sure she trusted that response.

“I’ve been speaking with your guidance counselor, and asked her to check in on how you were doing in your classes so far.” She unfolded the piece of paper, stared at it in distaste, and then held it up for me to see. “This is unacceptable, Eli.”

I leaned forward, trying to read the small print on the page. “Mom, I’m—”

“No, no, let me finish.” She held up a hand to forestall me. “I’ve talked it over with your father, and we’ve decided it’s best to curtail your social life, until you pull your grades up.”

“But I—”

“You promised you were going to do better this year, but I’m just not seeing any evidence of that. And you’ve been gone so often, spending so much time with your friends. You know, college is right around the corner, and I don’t know how you expect us to trust you away at school if you can’t even be responsible for your grades while you’re still here.”

“Mom, you put me in all AP’s. In classes I never had a prayer of doing well in. This isn’t my fault.”

“Eli, blaming this on someone else, trying to shirk responsibility—that’s the kind of immaturity that concerns me so much.”

“You can’t just ground me,” I protested. “I have commitments. Church stuff—”

“I’m aware of that,” my mom said. “And you can still carry out those commitments. Believe me, I would nip that in the bud too, but I know extracurriculars are important to your college applications. You may not care about your future, but I do.”

“Mom, I care, I’m just drowning in these classes. If you’d let me switch—”

“I don’t want to listen to excuses, Eli. I want results. You know, the world isn’t an easy place. If you don’t pull it together, it’s going to eat you alive the minute you walk out that door for college.”

“It’s eating me alive right now. You know I’m bad at math. I always have been. And somehow physics is even fucking worse than calculus.”

“Language,” my mom said sharply. She couldn’t have looked more disappointed if she’d tried. “Sweetie, I’m just trying to help you. None of my friends have this kind of trouble with their children..”

I rolled my eyes. None of her friends had this problem because they probably actually tried to understand their kids instead of assuming they knew what was best.

“What?” my mom asked, catching my look.

“Nothing.”

“That didn’t look like nothing. Clearly you have something to say.”

“No, I really don’t.” Well, I did, but I knew better than to actually say it. Trying to point out the gaping holes in her logic had never gone over well before.

“Don’t take that tone with me.”

“What tone?” I asked, well aware of what tone she meant—a tone that I was really struggling to keep out of my voice now.

“Well, now you’re just yelling,” my mom said, sounding injured. “Maybe it’s time to talk about putting you back on your meds. You claimed you didn’t need them anymore, but with these kinds of outbursts—”

“I don’t need medication, I need parents who actually care about me!”

“I do care,” my mom shot back. “I care about you more than anything in my life, and I don’t understand why you don’t see that. Honestly, Eli, why do you have to be like this?”

“Like what?” I exploded. “Mad, because you’re not listening to anything I say? Frustrated, because you’re putting me in these impossible situations, putting me in classes that I never had a prayer of doing well in, and then getting mad at me for not doing well in them? Pissed the fuck off because you care more about what other people think than about whether any of this makes me happy? Mom, I’m trying. I swear, I am. But I’m not good at this stuff, which you’d know if you ever listened to me. But you don’t actually give a shit. You just want to force me into this mold and turn me into an image-obsessed automaton like you.”

Yeah. The conversation went downhill from there.

I was still in a foul mood when Aisling picked me up for youth group. It was a social action Sunday, which meant that instead of a normal meeting, we were helping out at a soup kitchen. I volunteered to chop vegetables, organize shelves, do dishes—pretty much anything that kept me in the back and away from interacting with any actual humans. I was too pissed off to want to talk to anyone, and the fact that I could hear my mom’s voice in the back of my mind, telling me how immature I was being, didn’t help matters.

No one said anything, but I thought I saw Nick giving me a speculative look whenever he swung through the kitchen. Or maybe it wasn’t speculative. Maybe he was disappointed, too.

Well, fuck that. I was too mad to care about what Nick thought of me. What did it matter, anyway? It was over a month since that first Sunday after the con, and Nick hadn’t done a damn thing to treat me differently from anyone else. The fact that that was what I’d told him I wanted didn’t stop me from being annoyed.

Because I couldn’t stop thinking about Nick, couldn’t get myself to treat him like any other advisor we’d had. I found myself hoarding information about him, trying to piece together the puzzle that was Nick Sawyer.

He’d told Aisling he had family in New Jersey. I’d already known that, but when he’d mentioned it to her a few weeks ago, Nick had seemed almost sad, and then he’d changed the subject. I wanted to know why—and I knew I couldn’t ask.

Nick had told Sarah he worked two part-time jobs, and still volunteered to cover the night shift once a week at the place he’d interned last year, some mental health clinic. I wondered if that was why he’d been in Penn Station so early over the summer, those mornings we’d run into each other. And I knew I couldn’t ask.

Just last week, Nick had told Dario and Vikram that he’d studied philosophy in college, and minored in justice and peace, and then he’d laughed and told them not to follow in his footsteps if they ever wanted to be gainfully employed.

How did you minor in peace? And was that when Nick had decided to become a minister? And why did he want to be a minister, exactly? I was sure it was because he wanted to help people—you didn’t have to be a Nick-expert to figure that out. You only had to hear him talk once to know that that was what motivated him. But why ministry specifically? Why here? Why now?

And what had Nick been thinking about, that time at the con down at Seagrass, when a bunch of us had gone for a walk to the beach and he’d stared out at the waves for so long? Or that time two weeks ago when Gwen had stopped by our youth group meeting and brought Nick coffee, and even though it was 7 p.m., he’d cupped it with both hands and inhaled deeply and smiled.

What was his favorite color? Favorite season? Favorite memory? What made the world light up for him, and would he ever tell me, and let me be a part of it?

I knew the answers to those last two questions, without even needing to ask. But Nick was on my mind all the time. It was the middle of October and I was just as hung up on him as I’d been back in August. I was beginning to worry that he could tell I was obsessing, that he could read my mind—which was probably why I jumped when I heard him say my name at the end of the night, as I was mopping up in the kitchen.

“Hey, you about ready to go?”

I turned, trying to lean casually on the mop and act like I hadn’t just been wondering what his apartment looked like.

“Um, yeah.” I blinked. “Why, are they about to turn the lights out or something? I just wanted to rinse this out, but then I guess I can go find Aisling. Haven’t seen her in a while, actually.”

“Ah, yes. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.” Nick gave me another one of those unreadable looks. “One of Sarah’s friends apparently posted something kind of mean about her online, so she started freaking out, and Aisling volunteered to take her home early. So it looks like I’m the one who’s going to be driving you home. If, um, that’s okay with you?”

If that was okay with me? If that was okay with me?

“Uh, yeah. Sure. I mean, whatever.” I shrugged, as though I hadn’t just won the Nick-lottery. “Just give me another minute and I’ll be good to go.”

It didn’t even take a full minute to put the mop back, but I gave myself a little extra time and tried to take a deep breath. Nick was giving me a ride home. This was fine. This was normal. Totally not a reason to freak out.

I met Nick at the front door and followed him out to where he’d parked on the street. He walked around to the driver’s side of a beat-up gray Honda Civic and unlocked the doors, but I stood there, suddenly paralyzed.

“What’s up?” he asked, starting to slide into the driver’s seat, then getting back out when he realized I wasn’t moving.

“Um.” I paused. “Do you, uh, want me to sit in the back or something?”

“Why would I—oh.” Nick blinked.

“I just didn’t want you to feel like I was—”

“No,” Nick broke in decisively. “No, I think it’s actually much weirder if you sit in the back. I mean, as long as you’re comfortable—”

“Yeah, yeah, totally.” Mortified, I opened the door and got in. Overthinking things as usual.

Great job convincing Nick you’re totally cool with everything. Really smooth.

Nick climbed in and turned the car on, then pulled out of the parallel parking spot with practiced ease. We drove in silence for a few minutes until Nick spoke.

“Do you wanna talk about it?” he asked, his voice gentle.

“Do I—I mean—talk about what?” I stammered.

Nick glanced at me out of the corner of his eye.

“Just that you didn’t seem like you were in the greatest mood tonight. I didn’t know if you wanted to talk.”

“Oh.” I flushed. “Um. No. But, thank you. It’s—it’s not that big a deal.”

Or at least, I wasn’t sure Nick would think it was a big deal, and I didn’t really want to explain the fight I’d had with my mom only to discover he thought I was being unreasonable.

“Okay.”

Nick didn’t seem bothered by my reply, or the silence, but I started to feel like I needed to say something.

“Do you mind if I turn on the radio?” I asked.

“Go for it.”

I reached out and punched the dial, then spun through the stations, looking for something I liked.

“You can plug in your phone, too,” Nick offered. “If you’d rather listen to something else.”

“No, it’s—it’s fine.” I flushed again. Jesus, it was getting to the point where Nick simply looking in my direction was enough to make my face turn bright red.

“It’s, um, it’s hard to explain, but I kinda like the radio? I know I could just put on a playlist or stream something and there would be no commercials, but that almost seems like cheating, you know?”

“Never thought of it like that,” Nick said. He didn’t sound like he was making fun of me, but, me being me, I decided to over-explain anyway.

“There’s something magical about the radio. It’s the lack of control, I guess. You just have to take what comes, and it makes it so that when you do hear a song you love, it’s all the more special. And then sometimes, a song and a moment will come together so perfectly and it just, like, crystallizes that experience. It becomes this talisman that you can carry around with you, and every time you hear that song after, you remember that moment, and it’s just—” I glanced over at Nick, wondering how he was taking my incoherent babbling. “I don’t know, maybe that’s stupid.”

“I don’t think it’s stupid at all.” Nick flashed me a smile. “I really like that. Finding little moments of meaning in an otherwise ordinary day.”

“Yeah.” I looked at him in surprise. “Yeah, exactly. I don’t know if this sounds dumb, but it almost makes me feel connected to the universe or something. It makes it feel like things are less random.”

Nick shook his head and laughed. “Eli, I’m studying to become a minister. I’m never gonna think it’s dumb to look for connection or meaning.”

“Oh.” I looked down at my lap, not quite believing I’d said all that, or that Nick didn’t think it was strange.

I’d tried to explain it to my dad once, in the car, and he’d told me to stop being superstitious and changed the station over to AM news. I knew it was just superstition, but it still meant something to me, and I’d tried to tell myself that was what counted. I’d just given up on the idea that anyone else would get it.

“So,” Nick said after a moment. “Anything exciting coming up this week?”

I frowned. I’d actually managed to forget about everything with my mom for a few minutes, but the thought of school this week, and of being grounded for—God, she hadn’t even said for how long—brought it all crashing back down.

“Not really,” I said after a moment.

“Oh.” Nick didn’t say anything else, didn’t press, and maybe that was why I felt like I wanted to explain.

“It’s just—”

“No, it’s fine. You said you didn’t want to talk about it.” He waved my explanation away. “You don’t have to.”

“I just feel trapped” I blurted out. “My mom just grounded me because she doesn’t think my grades are good enough, but that’s because I’m in all these classes that I genuinely should not be in because I’m not at their level. She thinks I’m not trying, but I am, I’m just not smart enough for them. But if I try to explain that, she just tells me I’m trying to avoid taking responsibility for my actions, and there’s literally nothing I can do to convince her otherwise, and if I get mad, she just tells me I’m being even more irresponsible, and now she’s threatening to put me back on meds that I don’t even need for conditions I don’t even have, and the whole thing is just ridiculous.”

“Wow.” Nick nodded slowly as he drove. “That’s… a lot.”

“Sorry,” I mumbled. “I just—I don’t know what to do. It all feels so pointless, you know? She just doesn’t understand me, and I know that’s a ridiculous complaint to have, that I should be grateful that she cares, but it’s like she doesn’t even see me—not who I really am, anyway.”

“That must be really hard.”

“She’s got this group of friends that she’s constantly trying to keep up with—they’re almost all the wives of other doctors my dad works with. And she tries to justify the decisions she makes by saying she’s doing what’s best for me, but it’s really just because she wants to look perfect. It’s why we go to church. It’s why we moved to Quincy. It’s why she volunteers for a billion committees I don’t even think she likes. I don’t think any of this makes her happy, and I know it bothers her that my dad won’t get more involved, but she keeps trying to force all of us into this picture that just doesn’t fit.”

Nick gave me a sympathetic look as he turned onto Woodland Drive. We were only a few minutes from my house now.

I sighed. “I keep telling myself that I’m about to go away for college and I don’t ever have to come back if I don’t want to. But they’ll probably find some way to control me no matter what, and I’ll keep jumping through these hoops trying to please them until I die.” I snorted. “Really cheerful thought, I know.”

“Hey, I asked,” Nick said. “You’re just being honest.”

“Do you ever just feel like there’s literally no meaning to life at all?” I asked quietly. “And just wonder why you bother getting out of bed?” Then I heard what I’d said and made a face. “Actually, probably not, right? If you’re trying to be a minister.”

Nick laughed. “I hate to break it to you, but ‘trying to be a minister’ is not the same thing as ‘never has a moment’s doubt.’ I wonder that all the time. I think it’s normal to wonder about that. We all have good days and bad days”

“So then how do you get through the bad days?” I asked, biting my lip. Why had I even started talking about this? Nick must think I was pathetic.

“That’s a good question,” Nick said, turning onto my street. “I guess you just have to take each day as it comes. But you talked about moments of connection earlier, right? I think those make a big difference. For me, talking to other people helps me feel connected, because it reminds me that we’re all in this together. And when we lean on each other, we feel less alone.”

“Well that’s annoyingly reasonable and hard to argue with.” I shot him a disgruntled look. “I thought you were going to tell me that you had an unshakeable faith in God and even bad things happen for a reason and I just had to keep believing, blah blah blah.”

Nick barked a laugh. “Man, you picked the wrong religion if you wanted that kind of assurance. Or your parents did, I guess.”

“Yet another thing I get to be mad at them for,” I complained. “I was really hoping you were going to say something obnoxious so I could tell you that nothing means anything, we’re all just waiting for the sun to burn out, and I might as well spend the rest of my meaningless existence as a debauched expat novelist living on a beach in Thailand somewhere.”

“I mean, that’s also an option.” Nick chuckled. “Shoot for your dreams, Eli.”

“Thanks,” I said drily, as Nick pulled over in front of my house. I stared at the porch for a long moment. I still wasn’t looking forward to going inside, but oddly enough, I did feel a little better. I turned back to Nick. “I mean it, actually. Thanks. For… everything.”

“Anytime.”

Nick didn’t move, didn’t do anything different, but suddenly I felt it, and I wondered if he did, too—this bridge we were building over the weirdness in the past. It felt so fragile, like one push could knock it over. I wanted to say more, but I wasn’t sure I trusted myself to get it right.

Maybe I couldn’t have what I wanted with Nick, but this could be enough, couldn’t it? This friendship? This tentative, delicate whatever-it-was that was growing up between us?

It would have to be, I decided. I got out of the car and waved at Nick as he drove away. It would be enough.