Chapter 1: The Tailgate and a Broken Promise
The tailgate had been going for three hours and my cheeks ached from laughing. Hanna was halfway through a story about the sophomore who tried to streak the library, and she was using her beer can like a microphone, sloshing pale foam onto the checkered cloth.
"Then the security guard just, like, joined him?" Aria said. She laughed into her sleeve.
Emily shook her head, grinning, quiet the way she always was. Spencer had parked her truck at the end of the row and we had all piled onto the dented bed. The metal burned through my jeans. Behind us a playlist thumped bass hard enough to rattle the cooler lid.
The first text came while Hanna was still doing the security guard's voice. I felt it buzz in my back pocket and ignored it.
The second one landed thirty seconds later. I slid the phone out far enough to read his name and shoved it back down.
The third one I actually read.
Can't make it. Team meeting ran long. Rain check?
I sat up straight. Around me the lot kept going, rows of trucks and tents and people in jerseys, charcoal smoke and spilled beer and somebody's uncle yelling at a grill. I pressed call.
He picked up on the fourth ring. I heard it before he said a word. The thud of a speaker. Girls laughing. Somebody shouting his name from another room.
"Hey. Hey, listen."
"Team meeting," I said.
A pause. "Nikki."
I hung up and slammed the phone down on the truck bed. Hanna's beer jumped. Aria's hand went still on her cup. Emily watched me with those careful brown eyes.
"Okay," Hanna said. "What did he say this time?"
I told them.
Hanna's face went red. She said a word so loud that two guys at the next tent turned around, and then she said three more, each one worse than the last.
"He's at the house," I said. "I could hear the party."
Spencer's jaw tightened. She didn't say anything, which was worse, because Spencer always had something.
That was when I saw Liam coming through the crowd. Then Louis and Niall behind him, and Zayn carrying a case of water on one shoulder.
Four of them. No Harry.
My stomach dropped like the truck bed had opened under me.
"Hey!" Emily called, and waved Zayn over. He set the water down and kissed the top of her head.
Spencer's hand closed around my forearm. "Let's go get a drink. Walk with me."
I didn't move. "Where's Harry?"
That was when I saw Liam coming through the crowd. Then Louis and Niall behind him, and Zayn carrying a case of water on one shoulder.
Four of them. No Harry.
My stomach dropped like the truck bed had opened under me. Because there was no team meeting — there couldn't be. They were the team. If there'd been a meeting, Liam would've been sitting in it. Louis would've been complaining about it. They were all here, in jerseys gone gray with sweat, which meant the only one who hadn't shown up was the one who'd told me he had somewhere better to be.
"Hey!" Emily called, and waved Zayn over. He set the water down and kissed the top of her head.
Spencer's hand closed around my forearm. "Let's go get a drink. Walk with me."
I didn't move. "Where's Harry?"
Liam stopped walking. Louis suddenly found something interesting on the asphalt. Niall scratched the back of his neck and looked at Hanna, and Hanna looked back at him like she was daring him to lie.
"Where is he, Liam?"
"He texted you," Liam said slowly. "Didn't he?"
"He said team meeting."
Louis made a sound in his throat. "You want the truth or the version he gave you?"
"Louis," Aria said quietly.
"Don't," I said. "I already know."
I did. That was the worst part. There hadn't been any meeting. They were standing right in front of me, all four of them, and every single one of them knew where Harry was and none of them would say it out loud.
That was when I saw Liam coming through the crowd. Then Louis and Niall behind him, and Zayn carrying a case of water on one shoulder.
Four of them. No Harry.
My stomach dropped like the truck bed had opened under me. Because there was no team meeting — there couldn't be. They were the team. If there'd been a meeting, Liam would've been sitting in it. Louis would've been complaining about it. They were all here, in jerseys gone gray with sweat, which meant the only one who hadn't shown up was the one who'd told me he had somewhere better to be.
"Hey!" Emily called, and waved Zayn over. He set the water down and kissed the top of her head.
Spencer's hand closed around my forearm. "Let's go get a drink. Walk with me."
I didn't move. "Where's Harry?"
Liam stopped walking. Louis suddenly found something interesting on the asphalt. Niall scratched the back of his neck and looked at Hanna, and Hanna looked back at him like she was daring him to lie.
"Where is he, Liam?"
"He texted you," Liam said slowly. "Didn't he?"
"He said team meeting."
Louis made a sound in his throat. "You want the truth or the version he gave you?"
"Louis," Aria said quietly.
"Don't," I said. "I already know."
I did. That was the worst part. There hadn't been any meeting. They were standing right in front of me, all four of them, and every single one of them knew where Harry was and none of them would say it out loud.
"Don't," I said. "I already know."
The sun was sliding down behind the stadium, a fat orange smear behind the light poles, and the whole lot had gone gold. I stood there with my phone face down on the hot metal and my pulse going hard in my throat. Third time this month. Third time he'd made me feel like a maybe.
Hanna stood up off the tailgate. "I'm gonna kill him. I'm literally gonna walk to that house right now and-"
"No," I said.
"Babe-"
"No." I picked the phone up off the truck bed and dropped it into my bag. Then I reached over and took the beer Spencer was still holding out, and I drank half of it in one swallow.
"I didn't come here to sit in a parking lot," I said. "Let's go watch the game."
Aria's eyebrows went up. Emily smiled at me, small and real. Spencer studied my face for a second, like she was checking for cracks, and then she nodded and climbed down off the tailgate.
Liam fell into step beside me as we walked toward the gates. "You want me to talk to him?"
"You want to waste your breath?"
He didn't answer that.
Louis jogged up on my other side with his hands in his pockets. "For what it's worth, he's an idiot."
"That's not worth much."
"Fair." He bumped my shoulder with his and peeled off toward Aria.
The ticket line stretched halfway around the concrete ramp. Niall bought a round of hot dogs and Hanna stole mine before I got a bite, and the smell of the grass came up over the wall, wet and green and cut short. My phone buzzed in my bag.
I didn't reach for it.
It buzzed again while we were shuffling through the turnstiles, and again when we found our row, and I sat down between Emily and Spencer with the whole stadium opening up in front of me, fifty thousand seats and the lights coming on and the field glowing like something holy, and I kept my hands in my lap.
Emily nudged my knee with hers when the anthem started. I stood with everyone, hand flat over my heart, watching the flag come out along the sideline, and my bag kept buzzing against my thigh like something caught in the lining.
Spencer leaned into my ear. "How many is that now?"
"Four."
"Let me see them."
"No."
The anthem ended and the crowd dropped back into the seats in one long wave. The announcer read the starting lineups — Zayn, Niall, Louis, Liam — and each name got a roar from our section. Harry's didn't come.
I still had my hand in my bag with my thumb on the screen.
"Read it or don't read it," Emily said. "But sitting there with your hand in a purse for an hour is gonna drive you crazy." That was how Emily always got me. Soft, and then exactly right.
I read it.
Nikki. I'm sorry. Come by after, yeah? I'll make it up to you. x
Hanna craned her neck past Aria. "What did he say?"
"He said sorry."
"He's always sorry."
"Yeah."
Louis leaned over the armrest. "You want to hear something funny?"
"No."
"He told Liam he was playing today."
The ball went out of bounds and the whistle cut through everything. I turned and looked at Louis properly. He had his mouth twisted to one side, already regretting it, and Aria had her hand flat on his chest like she was holding a door shut.
"When?"
"Last night. Said he had a whole thing planned." Louis shrugged. "Then he texted Liam this morning and said he'd catch up with us after."
"After what?"
He didn't answer. Nobody answered. Down on the field, our keeper punted the ball and the whole stadium stood up and then sat back down, and I heard the beer sloshing in Hanna's cup beside me.
The anthem ended and the crowd dropped back into the seats in one long wave. The announcer read the starting lineups — Zayn, Niall, Louis, Liam — and each name got a roar from our section. Harry's didn't come.
I still had my hand in my bag with my thumb on the screen.
"Read it or don't read it," Emily said. "But sitting there with your hand in a purse for an hour is gonna drive you crazy." That was how Emily always got me. Soft, and then exactly right.
I read it.
Nikki. I'm sorry. Come by after, yeah? I'll make it up to you. x
Hanna craned her neck past Aria. "What did he say?"
"He said sorry."
"He's always sorry."
"Yeah."
Louis leaned over the armrest. "You want to hear something funny?"
"No."
"He told Liam he was playing today."
The ball went out of bounds and the whistle cut through everything. I turned and looked at Louis properly. He had his mouth twisted to one side, already regretting it, and Aria had her hand flat on his chest like she was holding a door shut.
"When?"
"Last night. Said he had a whole thing planned." Louis shrugged. "Then he texted Liam this morning and said he'd catch up with us after."
"After what?"
He didn't answer. Nobody answered. Down on the field, our keeper punted the ball and the whole stadium stood up and then sat back down, and I heard the beer sloshing in Hanna's cup beside me.
So it hadn't even been a lie he bothered to build. He'd told his friends one thing and me another, and he hadn't bothered to line them up.
Halftime came. The band marched out and the drumline started up, and Hanna went to find Niall at the concession stand. Aria and Louis disappeared down the stairs. Emily stayed, and Spencer stayed, and the three of us sat there with the lights buzzing overhead.
Spencer finally said it. "Why do you keep letting him do this?"
"I don't let him."
"You answered the phone."
"That's different."
She didn't argue. That was the thing about Spencer. She'd take her shot and then let you sit with it, and the sitting was worse than anything she could've said.
I took my phone out for real and typed it with my thumbs, one sentence, no x.
Don't bother.
Sent. I dropped it into my bag and zipped the bag. Then the second half started and I actually watched it. Louis chased down a ball in the corner and kept it alive, and Liam slid a tackle on the sideline that made our whole section groan, and Zayn threaded a pass into the box, and Niall put his head on it in the sixty-second minute and scored, and Hanna screamed so loud that a guy two rows down turned around and shook his head at her.
For about forty minutes I was fine. My chest was full of noise and grass and cold air, and none of it belonged to him. My eyes only went to the bench once — to the empty spot at the end of it, the one with a warm-up jacket draped over the back, nobody sitting under it. I looked away before I could count how many times I'd looked.
Then the final whistle blew at 2 to 1 and the field flooded with people in jerseys and the speakers came on, and the boys came up through the stands to meet us. Niall got to Hanna first and lifted her off her feet. Liam found Spencer and just put his arm around her and didn't say anything, which is how Liam says everything.
I stood up and stretched and the whole row was moving toward the stairs, and that's when my phone buzzed again in the bag.
.
I read it.
Nikki. I'm sorry. Come by after, yeah? I'll make it up to you. x
Hanna craned her neck past Aria. "What did he say?"
"He said sorry."
"He's always sorry."
"Yeah."
Louis leaned over the armrest. "You want to hear something funny?"
"No."
"He told Liam he was coming to this."
The ball went out of bounds and the whistle cut through everything. I turned and looked at Louis properly. He had his mouth twisted to one side, already regretting it, and Aria had her hand flat on his chest like she was holding a door shut.
"When?"
"Last night. Said he had a whole thing planned." Louis shrugged. "Then he texted Liam this morning and said he'd catch up with us after."
"After what?"
He didn't answer. Nobody answered. Down on the field, our keeper punted the ball and the whole stadium stood up and then sat back down, and I heard the beer sloshing in Hanna's cup beside me.
So it hadn't even been a lie he bothered to build. He'd told his friends one thing and me another, and he hadn't bothered to line them up.
Halftime came. The band marched out and the drumline started up, and Hanna went to find Niall at the concession stand. Aria and Louis disappeared down the stairs. Emily stayed, and Spencer stayed, and the three of us sat there with the lights buzzing overhead.
Spencer finally said it. "Why do you keep letting him do this?"
"I don't let him."
"You answered the phone."
"That's different."
She didn't argue. That was the thing about Spencer. She'd take her shot and then let you sit with it, and the sitting was worse than anything she could've said.
I took my phone out for real and typed it with my thumbs, one sentence, no x.
The anthem ended and the crowd dropped back into the seats in one long wave. The announcer read the starting lineups — Zayn, Niall, Louis, Liam — and each name got a roar from our section. Harry's didn't come.
I still had my hand in my bag with my thumb on the screen.
"Read it or don't read it," Emily said. "But sitting there with your hand in a purse for an hour is gonna drive you crazy." That was how Emily always got me. Soft, and then exactly right.
I read it.
Nikki. I'm sorry. Come by after, yeah? I'll make it up to you. x
Hanna craned her neck past Aria. "What did he say?"
"He said sorry."
"He's always sorry."
"Yeah."
Louis leaned over the armrest. "You want to hear something funny?"
"No."
"He told Liam he was playing today."
The ball went out of bounds and the whistle cut through everything. I turned and looked at Louis properly. He had his mouth twisted to one side, already regretting it, and Aria had her hand flat on his chest like she was holding a door shut.
"When?"
"Last night. Said he had a whole thing planned." Louis shrugged. "Then he texted Liam this morning and said he'd catch up with us after."
"After what?"
He didn't answer. Nobody answered. Down on the field, our keeper punted the ball and the whole stadium stood up and then sat back down, and I heard the beer sloshing in Hanna's cup beside me.
So it hadn't even been a lie he bothered to build. He'd told his friends one thing and me another, and he hadn't bothered to line them up.
Halftime came. The band marched out and the drumline started up, and Hanna went to find Niall at the concession stand. Aria and Louis disappeared down the stairs. Emily stayed, and Spencer stayed, and the three of us sat there with the lights buzzing overhead.
Spencer finally said it. "Why do you keep letting him do this?"
"I don't let him."
"You answered the phone."
"That's different."
She didn't argue. That was the thing about Spencer. She'd take her shot and then let you sit with it, and the sitting was worse than anything she could've said.
I took my phone out for real and typed it with my thumbs, one sentence, no x.
Don't bother.
Sent. I dropped it into my bag and zipped the bag. Then the second half started and I actually watched it. Louis chased down a ball in the corner and kept it alive, and Liam slid a tackle on the sideline that made our whole section groan, and Zayn threaded a pass into the box, and Niall put his head on it in the sixty-second minute and scored, and Hanna screamed so loud that a guy two rows down turned around and shook his head at her.
For about forty minutes I was fine. My chest was full of noise and grass and cold air, and none of it belonged to him. My eyes only went to the bench once — to the empty spot at the end of it, the one with a warm-up jacket draped over the back, nobody sitting under it. I looked away before I could count how many times I'd looked.
Then the final whistle blew at 2 to 1 and the field flooded with people in jerseys and the speakers came on, and the boys came up through the stands to meet us. Niall got to Hanna first and lifted her off her feet. Liam found Spencer and just put his arm around her and didn't say anything, which is how Liam says everything.
I stood up and stretched and the whole row was moving toward the stairs, and that's when my phone buzzed again in the bag.
Don't bother.
Sent. I dropped it into my bag and zipped the bag. Then the second half started and I actually watched it. Liam slid a tackle on the sideline that made our whole section groan, and Niall scored off a header in the sixty-second minute, and Hanna screamed so loud that a guy two rows down turned around and shook his head at her.
For about forty minutes I was fine. My chest was full of noise and grass and cold air, and none of it belonged to him.
Then the final whistle blew at 2 to 1 and the field flooded with people in jerseys and the speakers came on, and the boys came up through the stands to meet us. Niall got to Hanna first and lifted her off her feet. Liam found Spencer and just put his arm around her and didn't say anything, which is how Liam says everything.
I stood up and stretched and the whole row was moving toward the stairs, and that's when my phone buzzed again in the bag.
I pulled it out on the stairs with people shoving past me on both sides, and I read it standing still while the whole stadium drained around my shoulders.
It wasn't him.
Louis's name sat at the top of the screen.
Meet me at the flagpole by Gate Four. Come alone.
Hanna was two steps down with her arm hooked through Niall's, arguing about whether the header had been offside. I told Spencer I'd left something on my seat. She looked at me a beat too long, then nodded, and that was Spencer letting me go.
The concourse smelled like stale popcorn and floor cleaner. Somebody's spilled cooler had left a wet patch by the railings. The crowd thinned out fast past the concessions, and the noise went from roar to echo.
Louis was leaning on the flagpole with his jersey balled under one arm. His hair was wet at the roots and he had a red crease across his forehead from the headband. Two guys in matching jackets walked past us and out the gate. He waited until they were gone.
"You gonna read his or not?"
"No."
"Good." He pushed off the pole. "Walk with me. I parked in the back forty and I'm not paying for the lot again."
I walked. Gravel crunched under both of us and the light towers threw our shadows long across the asphalt, past the last of the tents, past a guy stacking folding chairs onto a flatbed. Louis didn't talk for half the walk, which wasn't like him.
Then he said, "I'm only doing this because Aria would hang me by the ankles if I didn't."
"Doing what?"
"Telling you." He stopped, shifted the jersey to his other arm. "Do you want the real answer, or the one that lets you sleep tonight?"
"I want the real one."
"He's at the house. Has been since two."
I'd known that. I'd heard the party on the phone. That part didn't land.
"But that's not it," I said.
"No." He looked at the ground, then at me. "There's a girl."
The word went in somewhere under my ribs and stayed there. I kept my face still. I've had practice.
"Who?"
"Doesn't matter who."
"Louis."
"Some freshman. Met her at the union, I don't know. Liam saw them at the house before we left." He rubbed the back of his neck. "That's why he didn't play. Coach benched him for missing practice this morning."
So he hadn't lied about the meeting. He'd lied about everything else, which was worse, and he hadn't even bothered to make the pieces line up.
"How long?"
"I found out today."
"How long, Louis."
He exhaled through his nose. "Couple weeks, maybe. Every time he's canceled on you. That's how long."
I stood there in the middle of an emptying parking lot with my bag strap cutting into my shoulder, and I did the math anyway. Every time. The movie, the dinner, the two nights he'd texted sorry at eleven and I'd let it go. All of it had a face on it now and the face wasn't mine.
"I should've told you sooner," he said. "I know that."
"Then why didn't you?"
"Because he's my friend and you're Aria's friend and there was no version of this where I came out clean." He said it flat. No joke, no grin. That was the part that scared me, because Louis always has a joke.
"You could've just not said anything tonight either."
"Yeah." He nodded slowly. "I could've."
"So why did you?"
He thought about it. Kicked a bottle cap across the asphalt and watched where it went.
"Because you stood in that stadium for two hours and watched the whole game and never once looked at your phone," he said. "And then you texted him don't bother. And I figured nobody else in that house was gonna say it to your face, so it had to be me."
My eyes stung. I was not going to do that here.
"Okay," I said.
"That's it? Okay?"
"What else do you want from me?"
He shrugged with one shoulder, the way he does.
His car was the only one left in the back row, a silver Civic with a dent in the passenger door and a takeout bag on the dash. He unlocked it and threw his jersey in the back and stood there holding the driver's door, not getting in.
"You want me to take you home?" he asked.
I looked at the stadium lights going dark one row at a time, and the last truck pulling out of the lot, and the way the whole night had thinned down to me and a car and a truth I didn't ask for.
"No," I said. "Take me to the house."
He pulled out of the back row with his headlights sweeping across the empty gravel, and neither of us said anything for the first two lights.
The Civic smelled like cold fries and old air freshener. He kept the radio off. I watched the campus slide past, the library lit up gold on the second floor, a couple making out against a bike rack, a cop car idling outside the dorms with its lights off.
At the third light he finally spoke.
"You want me to drop you at the corner?"
"No."
"Okay."
Another block. He flicked his blinker on without needing to, some old habit, and turned toward Greek row. The lawns got wider and the houses got bigger and the noise started coming in through the vents before I could see anything. Somebody had a speaker in a window, bass thudding through the closed car like a second heartbeat.
"You sure about this?" he asked.
"Keep driving."
He drove.
The street was packed. Cars double-parked with their hazards on, a knot of girls in short skirts weaving between them, a guy sitting on a curb with his head in his hands like the night had already beat him. I counted three houses with the porch lights strung in the same cheap white bulbs, and then I saw the flag. Blue and white, taped to the porch railing, the letters on it warped from a summer of sun.
Louis parked half a block down and killed the engine. He didn't get out.
"You want me to walk you to the door or you want me to stay here?"
"Stay here."
"Fine."
I had my hand on the handle when he said it.
"Nik."
I looked back.
"He's not gonna like it." He was looking straight through the windshield. "He's gonna say something stupid and try to make it your fault. That's what he does. Liam's told him twice this month about it. He doesn't hear it."
"I know."
"I'm saying it so you don't." He finally turned his head. "You already know. That's the thing. You've known the whole time."
I got out and shut the door, and the bass hit me in the chest, and the night air was colder than it had been in the stadium.
The walk up the lawn took about thirty seconds and I used all of them. Sprinklers had run that afternoon; the grass was wet enough to soak through the toe of my boots. Somebody had thrown a red cup into the bushes and never picked it up. The porch steps creaked under me the exact way I remembered them creaking, because I'd been up them a hundred times since freshman year, sometimes with my hand in his.
The front door was open. It was always open.
Inside was heat and beer and a wall of sound. The living room had been rearranged the way it always got rearranged, furniture shoved to the walls, a beer pong table set up under the TV with a line of guys waiting. Somebody had knocked a lamp over and nobody had fixed it. The floors were sticky under my boots.
I knew this house better than most of the people in it. I knew which stair squeaked. I knew the back porch was where people went to smoke and cry and make out, sometimes in that order.
I didn't see him in the living room. I didn't see him in the kitchen, where four girls I didn't know were pouring shots into row after row of little plastic cups. I didn't see him on the stairs.
A guy in a baseball cap grabbed my elbow and asked if I wanted a drink, and I told him no, and he asked again like I hadn't said anything, and I pulled my arm free and kept moving.
That's when I heard him.
He was laughing. I knew that laugh from across a parking lot, from a hallway, from a phone with a party going on behind it. It came from the back porch, and there was a girl's voice under it, higher, laughing at whatever he'd just said.
I stood in the doorway between the kitchen and the back hall and I listened to my own heartbeat get loud in my ears.
Then I went out.
The porch was crowded but he was easy to find, because he was always easy to find. He was leaned back against the rail with a bottle in one hand, and he'd taken his hoodie off and tied it around his waist, and there was a girl standing close enough that her shoulder was touching his arm. She was blonde and young, younger than me, with a fresh coat of lip gloss and a cup she was holding with both hands like it was a gift.
She was laughing at something. He was watching her laugh.
He saw me before I said anything. I watched it land on his face, the whole sequence, surprise, then a flash of something that might have been guilt, then the smooth mask sliding up over it.
"Nikki." He straightened off the rail. "Hey. You came."
"Don't."
The girl looked between us with her drink still up near her chin.
Harry put his bottle down on the rail behind him. "This is Kenzie. She's in my psych seminar."
"Hi," Kenzie said, small.
"Hi." I didn't look at her. "Can we talk?"
"Yeah, yeah, of course." He took a step toward me, and then he glanced back at her, and the glance was the whole answer. "Give me a sec, yeah?"
Kenzie nodded and drifted off toward the keg, and I watched her go and felt bad for her, briefly, because she didn't know either. She was going to be standing in a doorway in three months with her phone in her hand and a text that said sorry.
Harry rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand. "You didn't text back."
"I texted you don't bother."
"I know." He laughed once, short and flat, and it sounded wrong coming out of him. "That's kind of why I figured you weren't coming."
"Louis drove me."
His jaw moved. "Louis."
"Yeah."
He looked past me into the house, and I knew he was doing the math, all of it, Liam and Louis and who'd said what and how much I knew. He was smart like that. He could count the exits.
"So he told you."
"He told me."
"Okay." He nodded slowly, like I'd handed him something he could work with. "Okay, look. This isn't what it looks like."
I laughed. I couldn't help it.
"Say the next part," I said. "Go on. You were gonna say we're not together, right? You were gonna say we never said it was anything. That's the line, isn't it, that's the one you've got ready."
He didn't answer. Which was an answer.
"You could've just told me," I said. "Any one of those nights, you could've opened your mouth and told me what you wanted. Instead you let me sit in that stadium for two hours while you were in this house, and you let me watch your whole team play without you and figure it out on my own."
"I didn't let you do anything."
"See, that's it." I stepped closer. I could smell him, soap and beer and somebody's cigarettes. "That's exactly it. You don't take anything. You just don't show up, and then you're sorry, and then you do it again, and somehow I end up the one standing in a parking lot at midnight like an idiot."
"I'm not saying you're an idiot."
"You're not saying anything."
He looked at the floorboards. Somebody on the other end of the porch dropped a bottle and it didn't break, and everyone laughed, and neither of us moved.
Then he said it, quiet.
"What do you want me to do?"
And that was the one. That was the sentence I'd been walking up the lawn to hear, and it landed in me wrong, because it wasn't an apology. It was a door he'd opened halfway and left for me to walk through or to close myself.
I stood there in the noise with my bag strap cutting into my shoulder and his hoodie tied at his waist, and I decided something.
I turned and walked.
Behind me he said my name once. Then louder, over the speaker that was thudding through the window. I kept going through the kitchen, past the four girls and their shots, past the guy in the baseball cap who'd never learned what no means. The front door was still open. So was everything else in that house.
The porch steps creaked under me a second time. Wet grass soaked through both boots. I didn't look back at the rail, or the bottle he'd left sitting on it, or the blonde girl by the keg.
Halfway across the lawn the screen door banged.
"Nikki. Nikki, hold on."
Footsteps behind me, fast and sloppy on the grass. He caught up at the sidewalk with his breath already going. The hoodie was still knotted at his waist. He hadn't grabbed his phone or his keys or his jacket.
His hand came out for my elbow. I stepped out of range.
"What, you're just gonna walk off?"
I crossed the street. A car with its hazards on rolled past close enough that I felt the heat off the hood.
"Will you stop for a second? Just one second."
I stopped at the far curb. Not for him. There was a wet patch and I didn't want to fall in front of him twice in one night, on two different kinds of ground.
He pulled up in front of me, sideways, blocking the sidewalk like he thought I'd bolt. The porch light behind him was strung wrong and buzzing.
"So what do you want me to say?" he asked.
"I don't want you to say anything. That's the whole problem. You say things."
"Then what do you want?"
It was the same question wearing a different shirt, and I knew what he was doing, because I've been doing it back to him for a year. Ask a question, hand the other person the shovel, let them dig.
Down the block, Louis's Civic sat under the streetlight with the hazard lights dark and the takeout bag still on the dash. I could make out his silhouette behind the wheel. He hadn't left.
I looked back at Harry. He had both hands in his pockets now, shoulders up, waiting.
"How many times have you stood me up?" I said.
He blinked. "That's not"
"No, count them. Do the math out loud, right here. I'll wait, I've got nowhere to be, I came all the way across campus to stand in your lawn."
He didn't count. He looked at the street instead. Somewhere behind us a bottle broke on the sidewalk and a group of girls screamed at each other, laughing, and a guy walked past us with a nerf football tucked under his arm like nobody was having a night at all.
"Three," he said finally.
"Six."
He looked up.
"Six," I said. "The movie. The dinner with Liam and Spencer. Two of the nights you texted me sorry at eleven. That one time you told me to meet you at the union and then didn't answer. And tonight, but tonight doesn't count as one of them, tonight's the one where I found out why."
He worked his jaw. There was a red mark on his neck from the headband and I hated that I noticed it.
"Kenzie's nobody," he said. "Seriously. She's a seminar."
"She knew your name and you let her stand at your elbow."
"That's not"
"You want me to beg?" I said it flat, no volume on it at all, and that landed harder than shouting would have. "Is that the thing you're waiting for? You want me to stand here in the street and ask you to pick me, in front of a whole house of people, so you can feel like the one who decided?"
He went quiet. He's not usually quiet.
The light above us buzzed and flickered and came back. A car turned onto the block and its headlights swept across both of us, long shadows stretching down the wet sidewalk, and neither of us moved while it passed.
"Then why'd you come?" he asked.
"Louis drove me."
"I mean why. You knew what you were gonna find."
And there it was, the thing I'd been carrying up the lawn, and he'd walked right into it himself.
"I don't know," I said. "I guess I wanted to see if you'd come out the door."
He looked at the house. Then he looked at me, properly, no mask on it yet.
"I'm out the door," he said.
"You are now."
Behind him, past the lawn, past the wet grass, past the porch with the dead lamp and the warped blue flag, the party was still going, and none of it had noticed either of us was gone. He hadn't even put on the hoodie.
He took a step closer. I took one back.
"Okay," he said. He held both palms up. "Okay. Tell me what to do. I'm not kidding, tell me the thing and I'll do the thing."
"No."
"Nikki."
"No." I adjusted my bag strap. "That's what you always want, for me to hand you the instructions. Then when it goes wrong it's the plan's fault, not yours. I'm not writing it down for you."
He stood there with his hands still up and the light buzzing on him.
"Then what."
I waited a beat.
"Walk me to my door," I said. "That's all you get tonight."
His mouth came open like he was about to argue, and then he closed it. He pulled the hoodie off his waist and put it on. Zipped it. Some little thing, but I noticed, because he's never once brought a jacket for me.
"Okay," he said.
"Not to the door. To the corner. Then you go back and you figure out the rest yourself."
"Okay."
I started walking. It was a long way to my building, nine blocks, cold the whole way. His sneakers fell in half a step behind mine.
He didn't touch me. That surprised me more than anything else that night.