“Thank you so much for the hospitality,” Dad says, grasping Mr. Rodriguez’s hand tightly. “Honestly, it means a lot.”

“It’s no trouble at all. We’ve grown really fond of Rosie.”

“It’s hard not to,” Dad agrees, and I notice that their hands linger a little longer than necessary in the handshake. I glance up at the two men, trying to read the air between them, but they’re just smiling and I don’t understand it at all.

Weird.

Very weird.

“Mr. Rodriguez has food ready,” I pipe in, leaving the suitcases by the door and herding Dad toward the dining room. Mr. Rodriguez already has the table set, a large plate of pasta in the middle like in those family-style restaurants. Vance squirms a little in his seat as Dad comes in, but then he forces himself to his feet and outstretches a hand.

“Sir,” he says, clasping Dad’s hand tightly.

“Nice to see you again,” Dad replies.

* * *

—

  THAT EVENING, I eat my weight in Mr. Rodriguez’s spaghetti and meatballs. Over dinner, we talk about nothing—the weather, the movies coming out, and Darien Freeman’s lip-sync battle, which has, by now, been retweeted over half a million times.

Vance doesn’t say much of anything throughout the dinner. He just sits and listens and bats his meatballs around the plate, trying not to meet Dad’s gaze, and aside from that it sort of feels…strange. Not in a bad way, but in a way I’m not very used to. There isn’t an empty plate at the dinner table, and there isn’t an empty seat where someone once sat.

It feels…whole.

“So, what are your plans after high school?” Mr. Rodriguez asks me after a while.

Oh, the dreaded question. I wipe my mouth, hesitating on what to say. Sorry, I’m a failure and I can’t even complete one essay so I’ll just live as a hermit in my room for the rest of my life reading Starfield novels and eating jerky.

Ugh, that sounds depressing.

Dad gives me a patient look from across the table, as if to tell me that it’s okay if I don’t know. He knows I’ve been struggling with the essay portion for a few weeks now, and time certainly is winding down to turn that in. “Well…my mom always wanted me to go to NYU because she went there as an undergrad—that’s where she met Dad.”

“My wife was an accounting major,” Dad fills in.

“So I want to go there, too—except for English, not accounting—but the essay prompt is horrid.”

“What’s the essay about?” Vance asks.

“Basically, what makes me a good fit for NYU, but what I think they want is why should they pick me over so many other gifted students? And I…don’t know.” I shrug. “And I just don’t think they want a sob story about a dead mom.” I force out a laugh, because it’s just getting too depressing thinking about it. “I’m really not that amazing.”

“I’m trying to tell Rosie that she is amazing,” Dad says.

“Dad,” I say. “I’m not.”

“Not as amazing as me, anyway,” Vance agrees ignobly, but I’m beginning to realize that that’s his kind of humor. Sort of self-important, but self-deprecating at the same time, because he doesn’t believe it himself.

And a part of that’s really sad, too.

“Which is not amazing at all,” I reply, and he mocks a dagger to the chest.

* * *

—

  DAD SITUATES HIS SUITCASE IN THE CORNER of our room and plops down on the end of the bed. Finally, his mask falls away, and he looks about as tired as I would have guessed. I sit next to him and rest my head on his shoulder. He smells like home.

“I keep forgetting how handsome Elias is,” he says, and I can hear him smiling. “I should come over more often!”

“Dad.”

“Is he single?”

I elbow him in the side, and he chuckles. It isn’t really rocket science that my dad isn’t as hetero as some people may think. He was the first person Quinn came out to as nonbinary—the second being me and Annie. He wears rainbow suspenders all through pride month, and he has a graphic framed on his desk with NSYNC and the words BI-BI-BI!— but I never guessed he would like Vance’s guardian. “Wait until I’m done working for them, at least.”

“No promises,” he jokes, and tousles my hair and asks me where the shower is. I point him in the direction of the one Mr. Rodriguez showed me earlier and change into my pajamas.

I grab my laptop from his satchel and retreat down into the living room. Mr. Rodriguez has already put the leftovers away, and the lights are out, so I turn on a lamp and curl up in the corner of the couch. I boot up my laptop, figuring I might as well try to write that college essay again, but every time I try to start it, I can’t figure out where to go.

Like I had said at dinner earlier—my life hasn’t been any sort of spectacular.

It’s been me trying as I might to chase after the disappearing shadow of my mother.

I stare at the blank page. The cursor blinks. In, out, in, out, like a heartbeat. I rub my first fingers against the ridges of the F and the J, trying to will some sort of word, some sentence, some semblance of why I should go to NYU and not anyone else. Why I’m spectacular. Why I’m me.

Argh, it’s no use.

I give up and close my laptop, and find my way into the library again. I don’t turn on any of the lights, and in the darkness the room reminds me of the first time I snuck into this house. I run my fingers along the spines of the books, closing my eyes, remembering the way Mom used to sit in her reading chair in those golden afternoons she loved so much, reading page after page after page, as if she was running out of time.

I wonder if she knew that she was.

I try to hang on to those memories, where she’s sitting at her sun-drenched chair with her round glasses pushed up the bridge of her nose, her brown hair pulled high into a bun, chewing on her fingernails as General Sond or Carmindor or Amara spiraled through the galaxy. But whenever I think of her at her chair, I remember that we no longer have that room filled with all of those books she loved. I remember that we had to sell the house to pay for the medical costs. I remember that we had to sell those books to close her casket.

Some days I still wake up and forget that she’s buried in Haven Memorial Gardens at the edge of town.

I don’t talk about my mom often. Whenever I do, my heart hurts in a way that nothing can really help. Like there’s this hole drilled into the center of my soul, an unending pit that keeps going and going, tempting me to fall in and get lost in the echo of who she was. Because she’s gone now.

She no longer exists.

But here, in this library, I can feel her, even though I know she’s gone. I can sense her sitting in one of the wingback chairs. I can hear her flipping the pages of a novel, slowly, and humming to herself as she reads.

It’s been a year, but it feels like longer.

I miss her so much.

My fingers stop on the one binding that is a little warped, the pages crinkled, and I pull it out of the shelf. The Starless Throne by Sophie Jenkins. I smile to myself a little and take the book out of the library, like I did that first night. But this time I don’t leave for the patio. I return to the couch, and I curl up with my mom’s favorite book, and I get lost in a universe where perhaps, on some distant star, she’s still alive.

I’m not sure how long I sit here reading, but after a while some movement near the stairs catches my eye and I glance over, expecting to see Dad coming to look for me—

Blond hair. Plaid pajama bottoms.

No shirt.

I quickly avert my gaze, but my brain is already short-circuiting. I was fine when he was in a wet T-shirt. I was super okay when he had on a loose tank top.

I am…extremely not okay now.

He must see me at the exact same moment my brain starts to melt, because he quickly about-faces and flees back up the stairs. My tense muscles begin to unwind, and I melt down into the cushions. That was too close. I let out a sigh of relief, and return to the page I was on, when I hear footsteps down the stairs again.

Vance returns, this time pulling a T-shirt over his head.

A T-shirt that reads GENERAL SOND IS A PUNK.

I snort even though I try not to. At least he’s self-aware. I watch him, apprehensive, as he gets a LaCroix out of the refrigerator and comes to sit down on the couch beside me. He glances over at my book. “Read me something,” he says.

I give him a baffled look. “What, like that scene in Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell?”

“I have no idea what that is, but if it has something to do with reading a book aloud, I’d much rather think of this as that scene from Titanic.”

“There isn’t a reading scene in Titanic…” I trail off as he stretches out across the couch and strikes a rather ludicrous pose, like one of those ’60s pinup girls.

“Read to me like one of your nerd friends,” he says valiantly.

I snort despite myself and shake my head. “I’m sure you don’t want me to.”

“Try me.”

“It’s about General Sond.” I show him the cover. “He gets sent on a mission from the Nox King to infiltrate a Federation outpost, but unbeknownst to him, Princess Amara is also undercover at this outpost, trying to solve a murder.”