Meg stays through the movie. She asks if I'm okay a dozen times, then goes home to study.

I soak in my time in the living room—lounging with a cup of tea in the kitchen, lying on the couch with my Kindle, spreading my shit out on the table to write an essay. Every hour feels like a gift. Soon, Drew will come home and I'll have to rush back to my room or brave that awful look in his eyes.

Afternoon turns to night. My stomach rumbles and it won't tolerate any more dry cereal or black tea. There's another little Tupperware container in the fridge marked "Kara." Delicious, I'm sure, but it makes my stomach twist in an awful way. My silence is hurting Drew. He's making me dinner and I'm hurting him.

I make a sandwich. Grilled cheese and tomato. Nothing special—my cooking skills haven't evolved much since high school.

The smell is comforting but the sandwich holds no appeal.

This isn't me. I've never been one to lose my appetite. No matter how awful I feel, I still get hungry.

I push my plate aside and turn my attention to my computer. I dive in to lecture notes and study them like my life depends on it. An hour passes. I eat three bites of my sandwich, pour myself a glass of water, and drift back to work.

The front door swings open. Drew steps inside. There's something off about him. It's like someone sucked every bit of happiness from his body.

I did this to him.

I hurt him.

He glances at me but doesn't look me in the eyes. "There's stir fry in the fridge."

"I know."

He steps onto the staircase. "Living room is yours. I'm going for a run."

He turns his back to me and jogs up the stairs.

It's the same as this morning. The room goes cold. I pull my hoodie over my head, but I'm still freezing. I sip my tea, but it's lukewarm.

Drew jogs down the stairs, headphones around his ears, gaze averted. He throws his hand up as if to wave goodbye and then he's out the door.

Again.

* * *

I go straight to my room and put my music on max, so I won't hear Drew slamming every door in his path.

My back and shoulders are tense. There's this crick in my neck and stretching does nothing to chase it away. My bed is hard and cold. Even my finance homework is better than this awful feeling in my gut.

I need my best friend back.

My stomach grumbles. Most of that sandwich is sitting on the kitchen table, mocking me with its blandness. It's almost ten. I need to eat something if I want to make it to midnight, and there's no way I'm going to finish reading Crime and Punishment before midnight.

There's light streaming from the hallway bathroom. Water running too. It sounds like the shower. So Drew is back from his run. Either my music was loud enough to drown him out or he's worked out enough tension he doesn't need to go slamming doors.

The sandwich is still sitting on the table. I finish it in four bites and wash it down with the remnants of my now-cold tea.

My stomach settles. That's got to be good enough. I trudge up the stairs with my eyes on the stark, white ceiling.

The water stops running. The bathroom door opens and Drew steps into the hallway.

In a towel.

In only a towel.

His hair sticks to his head. His lashes and lips are wet. Water drips off his chest, down his cut abs, all the way to that perfect V above his hips.

"You want me to drop the towel so you can get a good look?"

More than anything.

I clear my throat. "Excuse me."

My face and chest flush. It's not every day I get to see Drew like this. My body wants his. It's not like I control how the damn thing reacts to him. It's not like I want to be tied up in knots every second I'm home.

It's not like I want this kind of tension building between my legs, begging me to ignore my better senses completely, begging me to throw myself on his bed.

He's staring at me like he's daring me to say something.

I force myself to look him in the eyes, but that's worse. He has that same hurt, confused expression.

"I should read," I say.

"You should get a better line."

The crick in my neck spreads all the way to the back of my skull. Tension headache, here I come.

I press my eyes closed to will it away. I can't keep doing this. I miss Drew. I miss his laugh, his music, his arms around me.

"How about we pretend it never happened so things go back to normal?" I offer.

He stares through me. "No."

"Please." I play with the waistband of my jeans. "If we forget about the kiss."

His eyes narrow. "I'm never going to forget about that kiss."

I hold his gaze.

"I'm still going out of my head over the taste of your lips and the feeling of your groans in my mouth. I'm still going out of my head dreaming of running my tongue up your thigh and licking you until you come. I can't concentrate for shit. Anytime my hands aren't on my guitar, I'm dreaming about getting them on you."

My eyes go wide. I can barely breathe. I can barely think. I open my mouth to reply, but I can't form a single word.

He takes a step toward his room, his eyes still on mine. "So, no, Kara, I can't forget kissing you. Not ever."

Want spreads to my thighs, stomach, chest. It works its way down my limbs until every inch of me is buzzing. My lips part. My fingertips press together. I will an explanation to form in my mouth. Anything to keep Drew here, to explain this to him. "I had a reason."

He pulls open his bedroom door. "And maybe, one day, you'll trust me enough to explain it."

He steps into his room and slams the door shut.

* * *

Two a.m. passes and my book is still unread. My body is still heavy. My breath is still strained.

About time I give up on finishing this tonight. I turn off my music, change into my pajamas, and brush my teeth.

Yellow streams through my bedroom door. Hallway light must be on. I go to turn it off.

There's Drew's door, across the hallway, utterly closed to me. There's familiar music in his room. A guitar. It's so soft I can barely hear it, but I recognize it immediately.

It's the song he was playing at practice before everyone showed up. The one that threatened to tear my heart into a million little pieces.

Heaviness builds in my chest. I need to hear that song, to be near him, even if we're not going to talk.

Even if he hates me.

His bedroom door is open. I knock lightly and step inside. Drew turns to me. He's sitting on his bed, back to me, acoustic guitar in his lap.

He's wearing nothing but boxers.

That flutter builds below my belly. His back is so strong. It's like he's cut out of marble. I want to touch him and have him touch me.

Maybe I can tell him.

Maybe he won't run away.

"Can I listen?" I ask.

He pats a spot on the bed next to him. "It's pretty rough."

"I like it rough." My face flushes. "I mean... I don't mind."

"I'm afraid I don't have it in me to tease you as mercilessly as you deserve." He turns back to his guitar.

I sit on the edge of the bed opposite him. The three feet between us might as well be a million miles.

An acoustic version of Drew's song fills the room. I lie back and hug a blanket to my chest. The music is beautiful and sad. It presses on the walls of my heart, threatening to collapse them completely.

I can tell him.

I have to.

Drew lets out a heavy sigh. I keep my back to him, my attention on the clean, white wall in front of me.

The song bleeds into an outro until our breath is the only sound in the room. There's something so intimate about it, but that only makes the horrible space between us hurt more.

I play with the blanket. "Is that a Sinful Serenade song?"

"No." He plays a chord. "It's mine."

"Are there lyrics?"

"Yeah, but you're not going to get me to sing. I don't sing."

"What about..." I shake my head, but it's too late. The memory is already there. The sound is already drilled into my brain.

"That was a special circumstance." He leaves it at that.

Music fills the room again. "Fire and Rain," the James Taylor song. The only song he's ever sung.

It was the night of my father's funeral. After everyone left. I was in my room, alone, finally out of sight of everyone who was concerned about how I was handling it. Finally about to give in to how much it hurt and cry myself to sleep.

He had cancer. It was a slow, agonizing death. I was half-glad he wasn't in pain anymore, half-miserable I'd never see him smile again. But there was no time for any of that. That last year, he was too weak to help. My mom was either at work or shuffling him to treatments. Everything else fell to me.

I cooked dinner, did the shopping, paid the bills. I didn't mind the work. It kept me busy.

Staying strong was the hard part. I was their happy little girl. I had to smile for them, to convince them it would be okay, to convince them it was fine.

It was the same thing at the funeral. Everyone was proud of me for being strong, for being there for my mother, for taking care of things. I wanted so badly to cry, but I couldn't, not until I was alone in my room.

Drew and I weren't close anymore. We had drifted apart my first year of high school. But he was there that night and he refused to leave, refused to believe me when I told him everything was okay.

He sat there in my bed and he played and he sang to me. And then I cried and he held me until I was too numb to cry anymore.

That was the last time anyone saw me as anything besides their rock.

A tear forms in my eye. He's playing loud enough he won't hear, so I do nothing to hold it back. It rolls down my cheek and off my chin.

My eyes sting. I choke back a sob. I pull the blanket over my head to cover the sound. I pinch the skin on the inside of my forearm. I'm not supposed to do anything like that—it's two steps away from cutting—but I need some filter for my feelings before they consume me.

The music stops.

"Kara." Drew's voice is soft and sweet. He pulls the blanket off and runs his fingertips over my shoulder. "I know you usually start with 'I'm fine,' but this time you've got no chance of selling that."

A laugh breaks up the tension in my chest. "I'm sorry. I was just thinking about that night."

"We never talk about it." He lies behind me.

"I know." I relax into Drew's body. "You're the only person who's ever seen me cry."

"You're the only person who's ever heard me sing."

"That can't be true," I say.

"It is. And I can't hit the notes James Taylor can. Not anymore." He holds me closer. "You must have cried in front of someone else."

"Not that I can remember." I wipe a tear from my eyes. "My parents, even before my dad was diagnosed, they were so happy when I was happy. And after he was gone, my mom fell apart. There were months when she spent the entire night on the couch with a bowl of melting ice cream in her lap. And she'd look at me with these dead eyes and tell me how lucky she was to have such a strong daughter."

"Kara."

"It was like she wasn't there anymore. I tried to get her to eat, but she refused. I tried to get her to leave the house, but she wouldn't even get dressed. It was sweet, almost, how empty she was without my dad. But it left me without a mom, more or less."

Another tear rolls down my cheek. That was when my cutting got really bad.

I know it doesn't make sense. But it was like the weight of the world was on my shoulders, and I was desperate for any kind of release I could find. The pain in my body was like an outlet for the ache in my heart. It made me feel alive. It made me feel in control. It made me feel okay, like I could survive going back to being the girl who kept everyone happy.

It was the only way I could deal with my feelings. Mom needed me to take care of her and there was no one to pick up the slack.

The only time she was happy was when I did well.

When I came home with straight A's.

When I made it onto the varsity dance squad.

When I got into UCLA.

My experiments started with my wrists, but those marks were too visible. So I cut my thighs instead. I couldn't wear shorts or go swimming, and I had to be careful to make sure my skirts fell below mid-thigh, but, otherwise, no one asked questions.

No one stared at me with that concern in their eyes the way they did after Dad died.

Drew wipes a tear from my eyes. "Hey."

"Hey."

"I should have been there," he says.

"We'd already grown apart."

"Still." He slides his arm around my waist. "You deserved better than going through that alone."

My eyelids drift together and I soak in the feeling of Drew's body wrapped around mine. It's perfect—calming and exciting all at once.

I take a deep breath. "I'm sorry about what happened. It wasn't your fault. It was me."

He doesn't say anything, but he squeezes me tighter.

"You know, I always hoped I'd find you on my bed, playing guitar. That was the last time in so long that I really felt okay."

Drew holds me tighter. I close my eyes and block out everything except the feeling of his body next to mine.