Levi’s door clicks shut. I wait until I hear his bed creak before drifting up to my room.

I shouldn’t have said that shit about his uncle. You’d think I’d know better. I did know better.

And I hate admitting it to myself, but what he said was true: it’s not fair to spread rumors. Especially when, just seconds before, I was furious at him for acting like he knew me. For daring to try and help.

The saddest part is, this isn’t even the first time I’ve done this—pushed someone to the edge of my life, their only sin trying to get in at all.

Juliet’s family used to invite me to their weekly dinners the first year she and I lived together. Her sisters invited me Christmas shopping. Her dad tried to teach me about fireworks.

I’d had more fun with them in a few visits than I’d ever had with my own family. Their back-and-forth was funny and warm, even when you were only watching from the outside. We drank their dad’s homemade strawberry wine on the porch and played charades until midnight, the first time. The second, we watched a basketball game and made caramel popcorn.

When Juliet invited me back, those were the first things I thought of: strawberries and caramel. Her dad’s house brimming with noise and movement and laughter, and how right it felt to be there, in the middle of complete strangers who treated me like their own. Like they knew me.

But I turned her down, because that was when it hit me—they didn’t know me, no more than I knew them. A few nights together playing games and getting tipsy on fruit couldn’t change that. They weren’t my family. If I was meant to be a part of it, I would have been born into it.

Relationships fail. Friendships fail. And families, even makeshift ones you stumble into by accident, can fail, too.

I lie on my bed and watch the ceiling fan spin, remembering how sad Levi’s face looked on the stairs. It was like he pitied me or something.

But shit, shouldn’t he see where I’m coming from? Of all people, you’d think a twice-cheated divorced guy would share my views.

I’m not the one who’s pathetic. He is.

And that’s exactly what I keep telling myself, until the hurricane puts me to sleep.

* * *

The next morning is the most awkward, painful encounter I think I’ve ever had. Both of us actually shrink away from each other when I open my bedroom door and there he is, passing by at the exact same moment.

“Morning,” he says, in a voice like someone just slapped a fresh sunburn on his back.

“Morning,” I nod, like I just stubbed my toe on the edge of a cabinet.

We do a weird dance around each other, until I tell him to go first. Big mistake: he’s fresh out of the shower, and the smell of his soap creates an irresistible cloud I have no choice but to walk through.

I think of our kiss last night, and my heart wrings itself dry. It’s not like it was particularly energetic or wild, but that’s what made it feel so...

Passionate, my brain finishes. Real.

He’d kissed me with patience, and softness, and a strange kind of confidence. Not like he thought I owed him, but like he thought I needed it.

We don’t make breakfast together. Instead of pouring me some coffee, the way he has every morning since I moved in, he slides me an empty mug and the pumpkin creamer, wordless.

“Levi,” I say, and he finally looks at me, spoon poised over his cereal bowl.

I should tell him I’m sorry for what I said last night. Ask him if we can just start over, somehow. And if he seemed mad or even annoyed, I probably would.

But that’s the thing: he doesn’t seem...anything, at me.

Last night made a lot of things abundantly clear—but more than anything, it showed me how different Levi and I are. Sure, both our dads were junkie fuck-ups. We grew up with less than most kids. We’ve had people screw us over, ones we should have been able to trust with our lives.

Beyond those things? Our paths veer off at right angles.

I’ve never been crushed in a relationship like he has, because I’ve never bothered getting into one at all. I know they all lead to the same places, and hell if I’m going to get stuck in one.

Then there’s Levi, who’s had that good old American dream—beautiful wife, thriving business, gorgeous house—ripped out from underneath him in two seconds flat. The fact he still believes in marriage at all would be laughable, if I could get that pitying look of his out of my head.

“What?” he asks, when I don’t finish my thought.

I wipe my mouth on my sweater cuff and nod at the box between us. “Pumpkin spice cereal? For real?”

A smile emerges. It’s barely visible, but it’s something.

“You don’t like it?”

I take another bite. “It’s kind of overkill, with the coffee. But it’s all right.”

He gives a small laugh, and we go back to eating in silence. At least things feel better, now.

There’s still some kind of fracture between us, though, running the length of the kitchen. The feeling lasts long after we say goodbye and he leaves for work.

I find myself wondering the same kind of thing I wondered the day I left Indiana: how something can become more broken than it already was. Or, in this case, never there at all.