You can do this. I open my eyes and face the door head-on. This moment feels a lot like reuniting with my dad: heart thumping, cold sweat on my neck, no idea how I’ll be received. But I know, just like before, it starts with one tiny action. Just knock.

When I finally do, I hear scrambling, voices shushing one another. I recognize these sounds: hide everything illegal, grab the eye drops, look innocent. Like in the movies, where they switch a speakeasy over to a harmless storefront. Only much sloppier.

Jess doesn’t open the door. Instead, it’s her boyfriend, the one I saw occasionally pass by the window, or step onto the balcony to smoke, his silhouette inky and blurred as I’d leave the pawnshop.

Only this time, the lighting is fine, and I get a good look at him. It’s the same guy who flagged down Lila in the car, the day we left.

“Uh...hey,” I tell him, nodding as casually as possible. He doesn’t seem to recognize me. “Jess here?” I crane my neck to look inside, but he braces his arm against the doorway.

“Who’s asking?”

I square my shoulders, stick out my hand. “Shepherd Jones.”

The guy—Donnie, I remember—hesitates. He steps aside. “Jess,” he calls. “Somebody’s here for you.”

“Who is it?” She stops in her tracks when she sees me, eye drops in hand. “Oh. Hey.”

“Hey.” I put my hands in my pockets and feel for the chip, as if it will grant me some kind of super power. “I wanted to talk to you, if you, uh...have a minute?”

“Yeah, sure.” She nods to the balcony, then tells Donnie, “You can get it back out if you want. He’s chill.”

I’m not sure what “it” is, but assume it’s heroin. I follow her outside instead of verifying.

She shuts the door and pulls out a cigarette pack from her bathrobe. “Want one?”

“No, thanks. I quit.”

“Damn, Shep,” she smirks, pulling a joint from the box instead. “You gave up everything, huh?”

“Yeah. Eventually.”

Jess laughs and shakes her head.

It occurs to me she probably told Donnie I wouldn’t narc not because she knows that isn’t my style, but because she secretly loves the idea of tempting me. Putting pressure on me when I’m cornered, showing me what I’m missing. Instead of getting angry, I just feel sorry for her.

“So,” she sighs. “You wanted to talk.”

“Yeah, uh...actually, I wanted to apologize.”

Her eyes, still red even after the drops, size me up. “Apologize?”

“I’ve felt really bad about, you know—getting you into all that stuff, when we got together. I feel like it was my fault you got into Oxy, and the junk—”

“Shepherd,” she says, holding up her hand, “stop, man, okay? You didn’t get me into anything. I was already doing a lot of it.” She laughs, but the sound skates out of her mouth as mostly air, like she’s annoyed. “What is this? You feel guilty?”

“Um...yeah. I mean, kind of. I was the one who got you all the shit.”

Jess pulls her knees to her chest, cocooning herself in her robe. In the stark white sunlight, she looks so different from that night at the bonfire, I wouldn’t believe it was her if I didn’t know better.

“I made my choices,” she says softly. “You made yours. I don’t know why you felt like you should come here and apologize for anything. Is that some part of your NA oath? Fixing all your mistakes?” She draws hard on the joint and speaks with smoke still in her lungs, voice tight. “If it wasn’t you, it would’ve been somebody else.” When she exhales, the smoke catches the light. “Besides, I brought you the junk, that first time. Remember?”

I nod. I knew this, already, but I guess it helps to hear her say it. More than anything, I just had to get the apology out, for my own sake.

“You should go. Donnie doesn’t like people hanging out here unless he knows them, like, really well.”

I glance at the door. Through a crack in the blinds, where one of the slats is missing, I see him tying a band around his arm.

When I stand, Jess does, too. She shakes her head when I move to hug her, cutting her eyes inside. Of course: Donnie wouldn’t approve of a final goodbye, either.

“Take care,” I tell her. “And, uh...if you want to check out a meeting, he could come with you.” I reach into my inner coat pocket, where I put the NA pamphlet I brought. “You don’t have to stand up or talk, if you don’t—”

“Bye, Shep,” she laughs, cutting me off, her voice breathy. “Seriously, you have to go.”

I don’t move right away, her jab to my ribcage useless. “Jess,” I whisper. My voice is drowned out in the breeze, but I know she hears me. “You deserve better than this shit.”

For a second, I think I see tears in her eyes. Then again, they always did look kind of glassy, for as long as I’ve known her.

“Go.”

When I step inside, Donnie still has the rig in his arm. Jess sits beside him and slides it out, setting it on a paper towel before starting her own. She pretends I’m already gone.

When I’m at the door, every fiber of my muscles tense, screaming at me to get out of here, she asks, “Do you ever miss it?”

I look back at her. Donnie has his eyes shut. Hers are on me.

“Yeah.” My honesty shocks me. I take a deep breath, my heart shaking in my chest at the sight of the needle on the table. It’d be easy.

Then I look around their place, covered in trash, reeking of sweat and animals I can’t even see. I look at Jess, swimming in her size Small clothes, her skin like paper.

“You should go,” she says again, grabbing the band off the cushion where Donnie left it, rolling up her sleeve to the shoulder. This time, her warning isn’t about what he’d do to her; it’s about what staying would do to me. For once, she’s looking out for somebody else.

I nod. “Bye, Jess.”

She doesn’t say goodbye as I step out into the hall. Maybe she says it after I shut the door. I wouldn’t know, because as soon as it’s closed, I bolt for the street, hands jammed in my pockets, one squeezing that chip as hard as I can without it breaking.

“To Tillie,” I say, holding up my apple-tini. Tillie taps her merlot against it, then Shepherd’s cola. We catch each other’s eye across the table, touching our drinks with the softest clink.

“Thank you two for coming out with me,” she says. She takes a sip and reaches for the bread on the table, something with a heavy crust and rosemary baked inside, like the artisanal stuff we sell at Hampton’s. I pick at my piece on the plate in front of me, but have trouble finding my appetite.

“Thanks for inviting me,” Shepherd tells her. He stares at me as he says it.

We eat in near-silence, listening to the live jazz band in the corner of the restaurant, for most of the meal. When their set is over, Tillie orders us another round and insists we each choose a dessert. Shepherd chuckles to himself when Tillie and I tell the waiter, at the same time, we’d like the chocolate ganache cake.

“The Davidson sweet tooth,” he teases, then orders peach sorbet.

“Sorbet?” Tillie gives him a stern look. “I said order dessert, Shepherd.”

With another drink in hand, talking comes more easily for me. I even exchange some words with Shepherd directly, though most of our conversation keeps Tillie at the hub. After all, she’s the only thing we have in common anymore.

After the check arrives (which Tillie grabs on her way to the bathroom, despite our protests), we step outside to wait. Shepherd helps me into my coat. I thank him, but try not to read into it.

“No cigarette?” he remarks, nodding at my empty hands once we’re out on the sidewalk. The restaurant is on my side of town, in the heart of the artsy, urban district. Storefronts are lit up, already advertising their spring lines, and college kids mix with young professionals along the street.

“I’m trying to cut back again. Tillie and I are thinking of going to a stop-smoking program next month.”

“Really? That’s cool. Never too late.” He checks his watch. “I’ve got my own meeting tonight, actually.”

“Ah.” I nod at his pocket, where I assume he keeps the chip. “So you still have to go to those? I mean, like, once you’re a certain number of months out, couldn’t you stop?”

“I could,” he says. I watch his breath form a cloud against the streetlights. “Actually, I haven’t gone regularly since I hit the year mark. It’s flexible. You go when you feel like you need it, or to help other people.”

I study his silhouette. “And you fall into which category, exactly?”

He wets his lips, stalling. “Told you,” he says. “I’ve still got a lot to work on.”

“Shepherd....” My sigh forms its own cloud and joins his in the air, gone in seconds. “This is hard. Being around you and...and pretending there’s nothing there. I mean, I don’t know about you, but I really miss you.” I pause. “Like, right now? All I want to do is kiss you.”

He smiles, but hides it by staring at his feet. When I step in front of him, the tips of my flats touching the toes of his boots, he glances back up. I press my mouth against his.

At first, he just lets me. Then he leans in, encouraging it.

It’s running my hands up his coat, wrapping my fingers around his collar, that snaps him out of it.

“Lila,” he breathes, grabbing my wrists and pulling them away from his chest. He licks his lips again. They’re already red. “I can’t. And you said you wouldn’t push the subject, remember?”

I bite my lip and nod, ashamed and a little annoyed. I don’t know if I’m more annoyed at him for stopping the kiss, or myself for initiating it in the first place.

“Sorry,” I mumble, putting more space between us. He touches his mouth as we stare at each other.

“If I relapsed,” he says, “I would say and do anything to keep you from leaving. And you’d probably believe me. That’s not an insult against you.” He puts his hands back in his pockets. “It’s just the kind of guy I used to be.”

“Used to be,” I emphasize.

Shepherd’s chest swells. He’s losing patience.

“I’m sorry,” I say again. “It’s just, I can’t understand your rationale, here. Either you’re in recovery or you’re not. You act like you’re…I don’t know, in between. Like being clean is a dimmer switch, instead of On or Off.”

He nods. I can’t tell if this means he agrees with me, or that he’s not surprised I think this way.

“If you want,” he says, after a moment, “you can come with me to my meeting tonight.” Through the fabric of his pocket, his hand shifts, and I wonder if he’s holding the chip. “Then you’ll see what I mean.”