But How Are You, Really

Chapter 2

SLACK MESSAGE FROM ROGER LUDERMORE TO CHARLOTTE THORNE, 7:25 PM:find out who Bezos’s trainer is ASAP

The panel did not have dinner, but someone from the English department had the wherewithal to at least put out cheese and crackers. While Nina scoped out seats at the back of the lecture hall, Charlotte loaded a paper plate with snacks.

She didn’t recognize anyone helping themselves to Vermont cheddar and Triscuits—most of their class was still at the reception. Hein seniors and a smattering of older alumni made up the audience. The only non-senior students still on campus were the ones who stuck around to work the long weekend as RC staff.

As the girls waited for the panel to start, Nina sipped a glass of wine and scrolled through Instagram. Charlotte checked her work email on autopilot, her thumb opening the app out of habit. Unsurprisingly, panicked messages from Roger cluttered her inbox. She skimmed them for an emergency requiring her deft hand. Her after-hours autoresponder informed Roger to contact Aubrey in her stead. She savored the thought of Aubrey dealing with Roger’s ridiculous, contradictory requests.

Aubrey became Roger’s second assistant six months ago when one of Front End’s board members asked him to find his daughter a place at the company. She wasn’t Charlotte’s first choice as a direct report. In fact, Aubrey wouldn’t have made it past her cover letter, which misspelled Review, name-dropped Mila Kunis for no apparent reason, and listed no actual work experience (unless you count “Instagram micro-influencer” and “workout class participant”).

Aubrey was not the reason Charlotte hated her job, but she didn’t help. Roger’s interest in work had narrowed to developing his personal brand, which left Charlotte responsible for keeping the lights on at Front End. For nearly a year she begged Roger to hire an office manager to handle the administrative tasks requiring a dedicated professional. Charlotte already wrote his correspondence, presentations, and performance reviews for employees. She couldn’t also manage his floor of the office, send packages, log his expenses, and collect his laundry.

But when Aubrey arrived in a cloud of scented oil that probably cost more than Charlotte’s utility bills, she botched the simplest of tasks. She put oat milk instead of soy in his coffee and forgot to pick up his dry cleaning. Typos littered important emails. On one memorable occasion, she mistook a U.S. congresswoman for a job applicant and escorted her to an interview with the social media team.

When Charlotte appealed to HR about the nepotism involved in Aubrey’s hiring, she received the corporate version of a head pat. Pauline from HR told her it was an excellent opportunity to work on her mentorship skills.

Maybe this weekend Charlotte would finally get lucky and come back from Massachusetts to find Aubrey’s desk empty now that Roger had to deal with her incompetence on his own.

An executive assistant could dream.

At the front of the lecture hall, a woman draped in an elegant purple shawl stepped behind the lectern and welcomed everyone. “We’re just waiting for our final panelist to arrive. Apparently, there’s been a slowdown at the airport.”

Indeed, an empty chair sat between Amy and the rest of the panelists. Charlotte recognized the other two alumni: a Washington Postcolumnist who graduated from Hein in the nineties, and the founder of an indie publishing house that exclusively printed Black authors. They were both featured in the glossy Hein Magazine printed by the alumni relations department.

“Stacked lineup,” Nina said.

Charlotte swallowed a lump of cracker mush. “Amy must be nervous.”

Five years ago, she and Amy received their diplomas on the same stage. They left Hein with the same awful mortarboard sunburns. Now Amy was sitting up there beside real adults, considered important, while Charlotte sat in the audience. She didn’t envy Amy, and it wasn’t like Charlotte’s story of clinging to a job she didn’t like, in an industry on the verge of falling apart, would inspire new graduates. She just wished she knew when she had fallen behind.

“Last call to grab some refreshments before we get started,” the moderator called out. Nina took a cracker from Charlotte’s plate.

Working for Roger looked nothing like the exciting career in media she imagined for herself as a college student. Teenage Charlotte aspired to be a New Yorker cartoonist, or at least an illustrator for a local newspaper. She felt on track at graduation, having secured an art internship at ChompNews, a millennial-driven digital magazine that published both socially conscious pop culture criticism and reported feature stories. But that didn’t pan out the way Charlotte expected. Dream jobs were thin on the ground in the real world.

The assistant job at Front End allowed her to pay down her credit card debt and kept her in the industry, even if she wasn’t working on the magazine’s artwork. Every so often Charlotte considered quitting, but she never forgot how quickly financial security could disappear. Unlike her friends, she didn’t have family to bail her out in the event of another layoff. There was no childhood home to move back to, no emergency loan to cover rent. Not even a Christmas card with a twenty-dollar bill.

Amy sat on that panel because she worked hard at Bloomsmith Publishing. At twenty-six she crafted the publicity campaign for a memoir by a sexual assault survivor that helped make the book a New York Times bestseller. But Charlotte also knew that Amy could afford the low wages of publishing because her father was a neurologist. If he didn’t pay Amy’s rent directly, he at least offered a safety net. Amy’s good luck didn’t make her a bad person, but it gave her room to pursue her passion wholeheartedly and thrive.

How many young people Charlotte’s age—without generational wealth—had stability? She would be a fool to leave Roger. She would be ungrateful.

Besides, she had a plan. The project manager role in the art department would alleviate most of her stress, and it came with a significant pay bump. Once she got away from Roger, she could refocus on her career, maybe even take on freelance illustration projects on the side. By her ten-year reunion she’d have more to show for herself.

As if on cue, Roger barged onto her screen.

SLACK MESSAGE FROM ROGER LUDERMORE TO CHARLOTTE THORNE, 7:41 PM:tell Peter to remove ALL REFERENCES to “structural inequality” from the commencement address

Nina interrupted her pity party with a gasp. Startled, Charlotte spilled wine on her jeans. “What is it?” she asked as she patted at the wet spot with a paper napkin.

Nina’s face had tightened in a mask of horror. “Shit.”

She followed Nina’s stare to the front of the room.

The final panelist had arrived.

Her stomach seized. Charlotte clenched the damp napkin in her fist, wine leaking between her fingers.

No. Not you.

Ben Mead eased into the empty chair at the panelists’ table. He gave the room a winning smirk as he shrugged off a black bomber jacket. His watch caught the light as he folded his hands together on the table—vintage, Cartier, a birthday present from his father. Charlotte had helped him get it resized downtown when it slipped off his wrist one too many times.

Her vision went dark at the edges.

Logically she knew that her ex-boyfriend couldn’t see her all the way in the back row. She knew that Ben posed no threat to her onstage with dozens of eyes watching his every move. She knew that she had broken up with Ben half a decade ago, and he had no power over her.

She still felt pinned to her chair by his presence. She couldn’t breathe.

“Are you okay?”

Nina’s words reached Charlotte through a fog. Her nails dug into her palm as she forced herself to look away, look anywhere else but at his blond hair and his boyishly charming slouch. Her muddy memory of his face, intentionally dulled with time, sharpened into high-definition present tense. Ice blue eyes like mirrors reflecting everything she wanted to see back when she was trusting and young.

“I’m fine.” The lie came easily, if not convincingly. “It’s fine.”

Nina hesitated, then placed a comforting hand on her knee. “We don’t have to stay.”

The professor moderating the panel tapped her microphone again. Charlotte’s window of polite escape closed. She crossed her legs, slipping out of Nina’s grasp.

My name is Charlotte Thorne,she told herself, a grounding exercise Jackie taught her years ago. I am twenty-seven years old. I am safe here.

When that didn’t work, she counted seconds as she breathed, four beats in and five beats out.

“Okay, we’re ready to get started! My name is Ade Ajibola and I’m a professor here in the English department.” A smattering of polite applause, and a whoop from an undergraduate. Charlotte bit her thumbnail. “Thank you for coming to tonight’s discussion with our distinguished alumni about how they have taken their Hein education out into the world.”

Professor Ajibola smiled serenely at her audience, either unaware of—or politely ignoring—the tension on the panel beside her. Amy had gone brittle, her lips pursed in disapproval. Ben made himself comfortable at the table, his arm sprawled across its surface and into her personal space. Charlotte couldn’t tell if he was messing with Amy deliberately or just being his usual dick self. He had a knack for asserting control over every room he entered. She swallowed, her throat tightening.

“I’m delighted to introduce our panelists,” the moderator continued. “Amy Rosen is a member of the Class of 2013 and a publicity manager at Bloomsmith Publishing in New York.”

Amy gave a stiff nod. She discreetly edged her chair away from Ben’s. Charlotte felt a pang of gratitude for her loyalty—Amy didn’t know the ugly details about their relationship, but she had enough good sense to dislike Ben on his own merit. He had a bad habit of talking over other students during class discussions, especially women.

“Ben is the host of the politics podcast Left of the Dial. He is also a member of the Class of 2013. What a talented year!” Ben nodded graciously. The moderator continued, “He’s now studying for his master’s in practical ethics at Oxford.”

Nina snorted. “Ethics? Are you kidding me?”

Charlotte said nothing, too shaken to appreciate the irony. Ben preened under the attention, shrugging like his graduate work was no big deal. His false modesty only underscored the program’s prestige.

They love me,she imagined him bragging to his friends tonight. They ate that shit up.

As Professor Ajibola introduced the rest of the panel, Ben retrieved a fountain pen from the pocket of his jacket. He spun it between his fingers as his eyes slid over the audience. Charlotte trained her attention on the moderator, refusing to get caught in the hot tar of his gaze. Pilsner and cheddar cheese threatened to make a second appearance as her throat tightened.

“Nope.” Charlotte shook her head. She didn’t have to do this. She was twenty-seven years old and she had left him, goddamn it. She shoved her iPhone in her pocket and knocked back the rest of her wine. “Nope, nope, nope.”

Nina wordlessly took her plate. “Do you want me to come with you?”

“No, stay.” Charlotte willed her voice not to break. She hunched over as she stood up, trying not to draw attention to herself. Fight-or-flight adrenaline throbbed through her fingers. “I’m fine. Tell Amy I’m sorry.”

“She’ll understand.” Nina swung her knees aside to let her pass. “I’ll text you as soon as it’s over.”

Charlotte crab-walked down the row. She could feel Ben’s eyes following her up the aisle and out of the lecture hall, his attention a dagger at her back. But she’d choose embarrassment over listening to his achievements.

She didn’t want to hear his voice. She’d only just forgotten how it sounded.

The courtyard outside the career center was deserted. She sank onto a stone bench and closed her eyes. The center of campus still smelled like fresh mulch and wet concrete. In her panic, time thinned as if junior year could reach out and grab her.

Not safe here not safe not—

Inarticulate black pain throbbed in her gut, her skin crawling.

I can’t do this.

She’d been kidding herself, thinking she could fake-smile her way through this weekend without an issue. She should bail while she still had a chance. She could go back to her room, throw everything in her bag, and reschedule her Amtrak ticket. A taxi could be here in twenty minutes, thirty tops. Roger would be livid, but she could handle everything remotely, couldn’t she?

Then again, how would she live-tweet his commencement address from New York? There was no live stream.

She could get a hotel room off campus and pop back here on Sunday when he arrived, skipping the reunion entirely. But she couldn’t expense that, so she’d have to eat the cost, and rooms nearby had to be booked by alumni and parents of graduates. Finding a place to stay would cost a fortune.

You’re spiraling, Charlotte. Pull it together.

She willed herself to breathe, drawing her legs up against her chest. “My name is Charlotte Thorne,” she whispered to her knees. “I am twenty-seven years old. I live in Brooklyn. I work for The Front End Review.”

As she reminded herself of who she was, she studied the patio under her feet. The more she repeated the anchoring words, the more color returned to the world around her. The ruddy beige of sidewalk pushed away panic’s inky black. Grass grew between the cracks, stubborn streaks of green and dirty yellow. Someone had planted blue and white pansies around the courtyard to match Hein’s school colors.

“My birthday is April thirtieth. My best friend is Jackie Slaughter. I am safe here.”

She didn’t feel safe. She wasn’t safe. But maybe if she told herself often enough, she could trick herself into believing it.

Charlotte once loved it here—this school, this campus, this little town. She loved Hein University like a child loves Disney World, only she got to wake up here every single morning for four years. She never felt homesick, not for a day, not even for a minute. As other freshmen lined up in the mail room to collect care packages from their parents, Charlotte felt blissfully free. For the first time in her life, no one turned up their noses at her sketch pads or the books on feminism she smuggled home from the library. She left her dorm room whenever she wanted, and she returned whenever she damn well pleased.

When she bought two family-size bags of Cheetos at the student grocery, no one sneered at her taste. When she slept until one p.m. on a Saturday afternoon, it was no one’s business but hers. And when she kissed girls, and boys, and folks who identified as neither, she had nothing to fear.

A few months into that first fall semester, she looked at her dresser and wondered what it would be like to dress for herself—not for her mother’s scrutiny, not for her private high school’s uniform, not even for the hipster kids down the hall. She had never liked that metallic pink pencil skirt. In fact, she had never liked skirts at all. Those espadrilles could go, and the atrocious patterned sundresses, and the cardigans, all the shit her mother bought and hung up in her closet like Charlotte was a doll and not a person.

She didn’t want any of it. She was done.

Ten minutes later, a heap of clothes sat on the floor. As Charlotte considered the few items that survived the purge, a girl she vaguely recognized from downstairs popped her head through the open door. She held a cardboard box of mac and cheese. “Hi! Do you have a microwave?”

Charlotte blinked at the sudden invasion. The brunette ignored her discomfort and did a double take at the mess. “Ooo, you weeding out?”

At a loss for words, Charlotte merely nodded. She blew hair out of her face and stood still as the girl picked a pair of barely worn shorts up from the floor. The stranger cringed at the embroidered whales on the pockets. “Yikes, I see why. Hideous or not, you could make a killing reselling some of this online. These are brand name.”

By the time they were done, Jackie Slaughter had helped Charlotte make two hundred dollars on eBay. They took what didn’t sell to Goodwill, where Charlotte’s new friend taught her how to flip through the racks quickly but methodically. She learned to identify polyester versus cotton with a simple touch, and she found a pair of black combat boots in exactly her size.

When Jackie saw her eyeing a fleece-lined denim jacket in the men’s section, she forced her to try it on. “Clothes don’t have a gender,” Jackie insisted. “If you like it, wear it.”

All told, Charlotte bought several loose men’s button-down shirts and a few pairs of well-worn jeans. Plus the jacket. She wore that jacket until the elbows gave out.

College offered Charlotte more than a respected degree and a few thousand peers to learn from. It let her be herself. It let her find herself. Hein was the only place she’d ever felt independent and safe.

Ben changed that. Not immediately, not right away. But when their relationship was finally over, campus never felt the same. Even now, six years later.

Charlotte pressed her forehead against her knees.

Deep breath in. Deep breath out.

Of course Ben was attending the reunion. Of course he’d be a panelist. How na?ve of her to imagine she could ever have Hein for herself. He was the son of a trustee, so this campus was practically his birthright. His last name was etched in marble above the doors to Mead Library.

It took her a long time to see the irony: Her ex-boyfriend had liked to think of her as his preppy blond trophy girlfriend from the suburbs joining him on the edge. It didn’t matter that she wasn’t traditional trophy material—Charlotte was shy and bisexual and helplessly afraid of sailing. Nor did it matter that Ben, the eldest son of a hedge fund manager, was hardly a rebel without a cause. The romantic tale of the leftist bad boy and the Chevy Chase, Maryland, girl-next-door flattered him and made her small. Insisting that her denim jacket wasn’t warm enough, he bought her a camel designer peacoat made of virgin wool, and then elegant white snow boots lined with shearling. The more feminine she dressed for him, the better.

Now Ben was a niche podcasting celebrity to young progressives who spent too much time online. He painted himself as a hero in public while he treated women like garbage in private. No one took a closer look to see if his talking points lined up with his behavior.

Footsteps whispered through the grass surrounding the patio. Charlotte looked up to see a loose dog padding toward her on dainty paws. The fluffy animal couldn’t have weighed more than twenty pounds soaking wet. It nudged her hand with its nose, a pink tongue lolling happily out of its mouth.

“Hello there,” Charlotte murmured. She stroked through the dog’s silky red fur to find the tag on its collar. “Misty, huh? Who do you belong to?”

Maybe she lived at one of the frats and slipped out an open door? Judging by her pristine coat and trusting nature, the dog was loved and well cared for.

Misty nuzzled against her knee, demanding pats. Charlotte obliged.

“You can hang out with me, sweetheart.” She let the dog lick her hand. She probably tasted like red wine and embarrassment.

Misty’s unrelenting affection made her feel grounded, the way animals always did. Mrs. Thorne showed dogs when Charlotte was little, and her prized Airedale terrier Cymbeline was the only member of the family who enjoyed Charlotte’s company. Dogs never judged her for getting overwhelmed at crowded parties. One day when she felt settled enough, with a less demanding job and more financial stability, she would adopt a rescue in need of a home.

“I see you’ve met my girlfriend.”

Reece materialized from the darkness, a leash balled up in his fist. He gave them a bemused smile. “Fancy meeting you here, Charlie,” he said.

A new wave of humiliation crested over the last. How many times during college did she text Reece after a run-in with Ben, her face streaked with tear tracks and mascara? How many times did she use his warmth to chase away the cold grip of shame?

Welcome back to Hein,the universe sneered.

She said nothing as Reece squatted at her feet. “This is Misty,” he continued, politely ignoring how odd she must look sitting alone outside the career center, spilled wine drying on her jeans. He gently pinched the tips of the dog’s floppy ears between his fingers and hoisted them up in the air. “She’s my soul mate.”

Charlotte cleared her throat. “We met, but we haven’t been introduced. Is she yours?”

“Garrett’s. She needed a walk and I volunteered. Anything to get away from that reception.” He cooed at Misty and rubbed her chin with the pads of his fingers. She closed her eyes in bliss. “Someone’s gotta take care of this girl while her dad parties, and she just beelined right to you.” He glanced around the deserted patio, and then at the career center behind them. “Nice place to take a break from all the fuss, huh?”

“It’s a bit much.” She left it at that, hoping Reece wouldn’t pry. The last thing she wanted to do was admit she’d fled a panel featuring her ex-boyfriend. Especially not to Reece. “Is she allowed to be here?”

“Of course not, but Misty gets away with murder.” He took the dog’s face in his hands. “Who can say no to this sweet face?”

Indeed, Charlotte could not.

Misty wiggled out of Reece’s hold and plopped her chin on Charlotte’s knee again. Her fur felt like silk as it flowed through Charlotte’s fingers. “Do you have your own yet?”

Reece eased himself down to sit on the concrete, his knees cracking. “No, not yet. Jess was allergic.”

An unkind smirk pulled at the edge of Charlotte’s mouth. She blamed the pilsners she had at the reception when she drawled, “No wonder it didn’t work out.”

He laughed without any real humor. “Yeah, I should have known. But my mom just got another Pomeranian.”

“Really? How many dogs does she have now?”

Reece gave her a bleak look. “Four.”

Charlotte snickered. “That’s a lot of dogs.”

“It’s four times the amount of poop that one dog produces, yes.”

“Maybe she was lonely?”

Reece grimaced. “I don’t think that was it.” Charlotte raised an eyebrow, and he hesitated before elaborating. “I moved back home a few months ago. Jess was the one on the lease.” He started a staring contest with the dog. Misty did not seem invested in the competition, twisting around to lick Charlotte’s chin.

“How’s that going?” Charlotte kept her voice as neutral as possible. She didn’t judge him for moving back home—between the student debt crisis, stagnant wages, and the bonkers cost of rent in most cities, it made good sense to live with family—but she knew he probably judged himself. Reece had never wanted to stay in St. Louis. She’d already assumed this was his living situation when he mentioned working at the clinic.

“The lack of privacy isn’t ideal,” Reece admitted. “But it’s nice. I’m saving a lot of money…” He trailed off, giving her a nervous look.

“There’s no shame in living at home. That’s way smarter than the mountain of debt I took on when I moved to New York.”

“Yeah, but you were just starting out,” he objected. “I’m twenty-seven.”

“Who cares? I bet your mom is glad to have you there with her. The dogs too.”

Reece nodded, his cheeks pink. “His name is Hammer, by the way. The new Pom.”

“Oh my goodness.”

“He weighs four pounds, Charlie. Four pounds. Hammer.”

“That’s just cruel.”

Reece grinned and shook his head. Charlotte’s face ached from smiling full and wide across her face. “Your mom is an icon,” she said, trying not to fixate on how long it had been since she last grinned until her cheeks felt sore. “I aspire to that level of momitude.”

“You always wanted a pug, right?” Misty wiggled her butt into Reece’s lap, and he loosely wrapped his arms around her.

“Sort of.” Charlotte licked her dry lips and noticed how Reece’s eyes got stuck on her mouth. A rude corner of her brain enjoyed his attention. “Pugs have a lot of medical issues, so I switched my allegiance to corgis.”

“Corgis can be mean,” Reece warned her. “They’re aloof. Very fluffy butts, though.”

She nodded soberly at his advice. “My hours are too rough for me to get a dog right now. And my roommate Kit isn’t really a dog person.”

“Kit sucks,” Reece said decisively, despite never having met Kit, or heard of her, before.

Charlotte snorted. “Kit does suck.”

“I always thought you and Jackie would wind up living together again. You guys are so close.”

“If only!” Resentment snuck into Charlotte’s voice as she elaborated. “We were going to move to Brooklyn together, but then she got that job in L.A.”

A very good job in public radio, Charlotte reminded herself. A very good job in public radio that Jackie quit a few months later, frustrated by the amount of unpaid overtime she was asked to do, but still. In her industry, Jackie had to go where the jobs were.

Life in New York would be so much easier with her best friend by her side, but Charlotte knew she shouldn’t be bitter. Besides, Los Angeles agreed with Jackie. The warm ocean air softened the abrasive edges of her big personality, and if she ever got sick of working in public radio, podcast startups were hiring like crazy out there.

Reece didn’t comment on her tone. “Is she here yet? I haven’t seen her.”

“No, her flight got delayed. The weather.”

He frowned. His eyes drifted back to the spilled wine on her thigh, and her fingers clenched around the lip of the bench. “So you’re flying solo?”

“I’ve got people.” She nodded toward the building behind her. “Amy and Nina are inside.”

He tilted his head and tried to read her face. His concern was so obvious that she shrank away. “I needed some air,” she explained. “Too much to drink, I think.”

It wasn’t a lie. She didn’t look forward to standing up again.

“We’re heading back to Randall if you want to tag along,” he offered. “I’m handing Misty off to Garrett in the lounge.”

She reached out to stroke Misty’s fur back from her eyes. The pup gave her wrist a hearty lick.

Charlotte would follow Reece anywhere he wanted to go. She wanted to talk about dogs and his family and what he did in St. Louis for fun, who he was now.

Plus, she knew that if she was left alone, every shitty memory of Ben would pounce and drag her down into the concrete. The late nights sitting outside her apartment building with Ben’s accusations echoing in her mind. The tinny sound of his voice pouring out of an iPhone speaker: You idiot, you ruin everything.

“I bet the vending machine still has Oreos,” Reece coaxed. His voice was silky smooth, incongruous with the childish invitation.

“Let me check my texts,” Charlotte hedged.

SLACK MESSAGE FROM ROGER LUDERMORE TO CHARLOTTE THORNE, 8:08 PM:what’s the password to dropbox

SLACK MESSAGE FROM ROGER LUDERMORE TO CHARLOTTE THORNE, 8:13 PM:need it now

TEXT MESSAGE FROM NINA DORANTES TO CHARLOTTE THORNE, 8:16 PM:Are you ok?

Still nothing from Jackie.

Misty sneezed. Her tiny face scrunched up and her whole body shuddered with the force of it. Reece laughed. He swept the dog up into his arms like an overgrown baby. “You got the sniffles, little one?” he cooed, his voice dark honey. “You’re okay, Uncle Reece has got you.”

That answered that question. There was no way she could choose answering Roger’s Slack messages over snack time with the cutest dog uncle on campus. Charlotte slid her phone back into her pocket. “Fine. But those Oreos are on you. I used my last dollar as a tip.”

Reece had all the good gossip. On their way back to the dorm, he filled Charlotte in on the life updates of Hein’s bro population. Reece’s best friend Garrett was still single but deeply devoted to Misty. His freshman-year roommate had started a monthly subscription box that sent you beauty products based on your astrological sign.

They paused outside Rosenberg Hall, a stunning Chateauesque building with brick walls and dark-shingled turrets that housed the psychology department. Misty was unimpressed by the 1880s architecture and took a leisurely pee on the granite front steps.

Charlotte searched her memory for the name of the third bro in his tight friend group. “How’s Liam?”

“He’s good! He’ll be here tomorrow.” Misty tugged him into a brisk walk, and Charlotte loped along to keep up. “He got married last year.”

“Excuse me?” Charlotte didn’t know Liam all that well, but he was hardly her pick for the first husband in the clique. Future weed brownie distributor, maybe.

Reece laughed at the shocked expression on her face. “I know, I know. He reconnected with his high school sweetheart at a reunion. A year later, bam, I was picking out a rice cooker at Williams Sonoma.”

“That’s nuts.” A startling number of their classmates were making progress in the direction of marriage. She wouldn’t be surprised if an invitation for Matt and Jio’s nuptials arrived in her mailbox soon, assuming they didn’t dismiss that kind of legal commitment as buying into the hetero-patriarchal wedding industrial complex.

“Good for him,” she marveled.

They’d made it back to Randall. She held the door open so that Misty could race inside the lobby, with Reece quick on her heels. Sound ricocheted toward them from the lounge down the hall, and she winced, covering her ears with her hands automatically.

“Sounds like the party relocated,” Reece said. “Let me get her back to Garrett and then we’ll get snacks.”

Charlotte followed him to the lounge but hesitated on the threshold. By the looks of it, the after-party had been in full swing for a while. Maybe forty people drank and howled at each other in the cavernous room. Former art majors mingled with engineers. Batty the crypto-millionaire stirred jungle juice in a plastic tub for anyone brave enough to dip in a party cup.

Garrett stood beside the beer pong competition with some other folks from the Black Student Union. She watched as Reece handed Misty’s leash back to him.

Reece murmured something to Garrett, who gave him a sharp look before glancing around the room. When his eyes landed on her, his mouth immediately pulled into a scowl. Garrett’s message was crystal clear. Reece might have forgiven her, but to Garrett, she would always be the jerk who broke his best friend’s heart.

Charlotte stood up straight and clasped her hands behind her back. If Garrett wanted to hold a grudge, he could knock himself out.

Reece broke off the conversation and headed back toward her, a deceptively placid smile on his face.

“Everything okay?” she asked.

He nodded, his smile becoming authentic once again as he reached her side. “Snack time?”

“Absolutely.”

To Charlotte’s delight, the shitty vending machine in the ground-floor laundry room had been replaced by a brand-new model with a card reader and three different kinds of Oreos. Reece fed crumpled dollar bills into the machine as she debated Double Stuf versus Golden.

“Screw it, I’m honoring tradition,” she announced before pressing the code for the originals.

“Hell yeah.” Reece fished the cookies out of the drop tray and handed them over. “You’re sharing those, by the way.”

“Of course.” She helped herself to a cookie as he punched in his own selection and bent down to retrieve it: Famous Amos chocolate chip. “Good choice.”

Reece bowed his head like a falsely modest director winning an award. “Thank you, I have excellent taste.” He leaned his shoulder against the vending machine and peeled open his cookie pack. “Obviously,” he added, nodding in her direction.

Charlotte rolled her eyes but smiled despite herself. She couldn’t tell if his flirtation was intentional or just kindness, and she wasn’t sure if she wanted to know anyway. Good thing she had a master’s degree in emotional compartmentalization.

Besides, she suspected he was just babysitting her until Jackie arrived.

She broke an Oreo in half and scraped the frosting off with her teeth, ravenous. Mid-chew, she offered him the other half. He raised an eyebrow but accepted the cookie.

“I’m part raccoon,” she explained after swallowing. “No dinner.”

“Ah.” Reece peered into his own bag and shook it. “Is it just me or did there used to be more of these in here?”

“Capitalism is a scam,” Charlotte said around a mouthful of chocolate mush. He laughed and she covered her mouth with her hand. “Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. You have great manners for a raccoon.” Reece offered her his bag and she plucked out a chocolate chip cookie as gracefully as she could manage.

“So,” he started, his voice gentle but serious. “How are you, really?”

Charlotte chewed her cookie slowly, grateful for the excuse not to answer right away. She could lie. It wouldn’t be hard. She could tell him about the celebrity founder and the pineapple allergy and the promotion Roger held over her head. She could overpronounce the consonants of The Front End Review and flash her teeth and swagger away with some excuse about how Slack messages don’t stop in the city that never sleeps.

But she couldn’t lie to Reece. She didn’t want to. Something about how attentively he looked at her made her want to tell him everything that had happened in the last five years—the ugly bits that didn’t make the small-talk supercut of postgrad life.

She wanted to tell him about the broken radiator in her apartment that her landlord assured her worked just fine.

She wanted to tell him how much she hated wearing skirts and dresses to work, but Roger insisted on a “classic” dress code.

She wanted to tell him that her insurance didn’t cover mental health services, and she couldn’t afford a therapist.

She wanted to tell him how hard it was to be so far from Jackie.

She wanted to tell him the truth about Ben, the real truth, the way he’d eaten her up until there wasn’t any of her left when she met Reece.

Most of all, she wanted to tell him how she felt right now. How mad she was at herself for treating him like shit. How annoyed she was that he looked fresh off some influencer’s feed. How much she missed his kindness and never once realized it until right now, this very minute.

“Not great,” she said.

The truth of those words ached. She’d admitted it to herself before in quiet, fleeting moments: standing cramped between strangers on the subway who shoved their backpacks into her spine and ran over her toes with their bikes; watching her favorite queer bar close permanently because the rent had gone up again; listening to Roger pontificate about how millennials just didn’t know the value of hard work as she answered his emails.

And yet she was so, so lucky, and that made it worse. What right did she have to complain? How could she want more when this was what she had always wanted? A job in media that paid a living wage, decent enough healthcare, a room of her own in an apartment with a roommate who didn’t steal, at least. In another year, she’d finally pay off her debt. If she got this promotion, maybe she could get her own place.

Her career in media kept moving backward as layoff after layoff forced thousands of talented applicants to fight over fewer and fewer jobs, but she lived in the best city in the world, where you could bump into Jake Gyllenhaal on the sidewalk next to a pile of trash bags taller than an SUV.

But those incredible New York City moments—the ones that supposedly made the cost and the stress worth it—had become fewer and farther between as time went on. She couldn’t remember the last time she went dancing at Cubbyhole, or wandered through a museum, or read a book in Prospect Park. All she could think of was paying through the nose for grocery delivery because she couldn’t carry her boxes of La Croix all the way from Key Food.

On most days she felt like she never left that crowded subway car during rush hour, surrounded by strangers unwilling to let her through to the doors. With each new lease she signed, each year that passed without real progress in her career, the oxygen bled out of her life a little more.

“I’m not doing great,” she repeated, this time for herself.

She forced a self-deprecating smile for his benefit, already worried that she’d gone too far, said too much.

But there was no pity on Reece’s face, just concern. He took both her shoulders in his big hands. The urge to step forward and press her face against his chest nearly overwhelmed her. She knew he could wrap her up in his arms and insulate her from all this dread. He’d done it before.

“The good thing is you look amazing,” he said. She snorted, startled out of her misery, and he grinned at her. “Seriously, it’s not fair! You have Disney Princess hair, what is this?”

Reece caught one of her curls between his fingers and held it up to the light. She felt a strange thrill at the sight of her gold and silver strands held in his grasp.

“The gray works for you. It’s beautiful.”

“Thank you.” She shoved her fist into Reece’s chest and he took a step back, laughing as he let go. “Flatterer.”

Reece gave her that open, joyful smile she’d never forgotten, the one just for her. Laugh lines, white teeth, the edge of his gaze soft with awe. His round cheeks crunched his eyes into bright jade beads, and a single dimple appeared beside his mouth. She wanted to poke her finger into it. She wanted to run screaming in the opposite direction. Her heart cracked open and leaked sunshine into her chest.

She wanted him. She wanted the way she felt right now, the way Reece made her feel when he looked at her just like that.

Warm.She wanted his warmth.

But she didn’t deserve it. How could she even think she did?

“Reece, I—” she started, and then tripped on a stutter. “I’m so sorry.”

Reece frowned, concerned. “For what?”

“You know what. For how I behaved at graduation.”

She cringed at the inadequacy of her words. How I behaved.

“Charlie, you don’t have to—” Reece interrupted.

She put up a hand. “I do have to. I was a jerk and I’m sorry for not—” Oh god, how should she put it? She’d owed him this apology for five years and never took the time to practice. “For not being more considerate of your feelings.”

She was proud of herself for a fleeting moment before she noticed Reece’s face pinching.

Damn. Feelings sounded so after-school-special, patronizing. She’d always been garbage at conversations like this, conversations that mattered.

“For not considering you,” she revised. “I was wrapped up in my own bullshit when we were hooking up and I shouldn’t have left campus without saying good-bye.”

“We really don’t need to talk about this.” Reece crinkled his empty wrapper in his hands.

“Reece.” She desperately wished he would look at her, but his eyes were fixed on the carpet.

“Seriously, Charlie.” He sighed. “It was pretty clear that you were still hung up on Ben. It’s on me that I wanted more from you.”

Charlotte flinched at the sound of Ben’s name in Reece’s mouth. “I wasn’t hung up on Ben.” She uselessly fluttered her hands, at a loss for words. “I was recovering from him. From…the whole relationship.”

Reece grimaced. “Right, recovering. Got it.”

Her face burned with humiliation. Reece didn’t know what happened because she never told him, and now she couldn’t fathom a neat summary. It felt so raw, Ben twirling a pen as he lounged at the front of the lecture hall, a memory made flesh after years of losing its color.

“Is he coming this weekend?” Finally Reece looked at her again, only now Charlotte wished he wouldn’t.

“Who, Ben?” she said. “Yeah, he’s here.”

His face darkened. “Cool cool cool.”

Charlotte realized in a rush that he assumed they were still in contact. “We’re not— We don’t talk.”

“You don’t need to explain.” Reece ran a hand through his hair again and a few more strands fell into his eyes. Agitation came off him in waves. “I’m sorry, I’m being a jerk,” he said. He took a step back, putting his hands up. “This is none of my business.”

“But it is your business!” she blurted out.

He raised an eyebrow at her tone. Charlotte didn’t care. She couldn’t look away from his face, tight with confusion and hurt. She needed him to understand that she really was sorry that she’d failed him. And that there was so much he didn’t know, so much that she never told him, that explained her behavior.

She’d never wanted to hurt Reece. She’d never meant for any of this to happen.

He took a deep breath. “Thank you for the apology. I appreciate it.” Instead of getting huffy like he might have done as a student, this new and improved Reece centered himself with practiced patience.

His eyes met hers, guarded under the fluorescent lights. Despite his intentional calm, there was so much in his gaze that she couldn’t read. “I’m sorry too,” Reece added. “This was something really great, before it wasn’t.”

She couldn’t look away from his stare, laced with sincerity and more dangerous emotions she didn’t dare name. She suddenly remembered the moment she noticed Reece’s rich laugh for the first time at the 3Ds support group. She remembered watching him thunder across the ice at a hockey game while Jio cheered beside her in the bleachers. She remembered her breathless gasp as he looked up at her while his mouth pressed against her inner thigh.

Something really great.

Once upon a time they clawed at each other, struggling to stay silent at the back of Mead Library during finals week. Desperate to touch and be touched, back when they were young and ravenous and stupid, their futures unbound, the taste of freedom in their throats.

Their relationship was something great, a firecracker burning bright and fast in the damp spring air. She also remembered that it was her fault they’d walked away with their fingers singed.

“It was great,” she agreed.

Before it wasn’t.

Charlotte studied him. Reece had changed in little ways too. She recognized the new wariness on his face. Stubble clung to his jawline, softer than it used to be.

His eyes were on her mouth again. Was the sexual tension between them just her imagination, another trick of déjà vu? Did he feel the same trapdoor sensation of falling headfirst into the past? He held her gaze a little too long, she was almost sure.

Charlotte licked her bottom lip, her own nervous tell, and Reece started and looked away.

“You know what’ll cheer you up?” Reece asked, unaware of the desire thawing in her chest. “Pong.” He adopted a cocky smile, his eyebrows waggling.

Charlotte groaned and shook her head. “No way.”

“You know you want to show those soccer pricks how it’s done.” Even when he used his low, seductive voice, Reece’s eyes sparkled with humor. “Let’s be twenty-one again. Let’s pretend Barack Obama is still president. We can play with water.”

“Reece…”

“Let’s go back in time, Charlie.”

It was the perfect invitation. Reece might as well have read her mind. She wanted to go back to those humid nights in his backyard when they licked away each other’s anxiety.

And god, did she want to say yes. She wanted to stand side by side with him at the end of that table and razz each other when they missed the easy shots. She wanted to goof around and slide her hand into the back pocket of his jeans.

But the idea of going back to that lounge, stuffed to the brim with noise and alcohol and people she used to know, was too much. She wasn’t used to the aggressive noise and blur of college parties. Even at her most confident, she’d never been a social butterfly. Especially now, when Ben could emerge from any corner, his knowing stare pinning her feet to the floor as her mind slid back in time.

“I think I’m done for the day,” Charlotte admitted. “It’s been kind of a rough one.”

Reece picked up on her dark energy. His head tilted to the side, all platonic concern once again. Whatever he saw on her face, it was enough for him to know she didn’t want to be convinced. “Okay. It’s only Thursday. We have plenty of time.”

Great. Three more days of this.

A sharp laugh ricocheted down the stairwell behind them, making Charlotte flinch. She knew he noticed by the way he stepped toward her automatically, like he wanted to protect her from the sound. “Let me walk you home,” he suggested.

She searched his offer for innuendo, but he exuded Older Brother Energy, the words innocent. She frowned, burying her disappointment (a deep, impenetrable blue). Her feelings were tomorrow’s problem. She’d deal with them later.

“Okay,” she said. “I’m on this floor. Room 107.”

The farther away they walked, the dimmer the noise from upstairs became. Her brain quieted like it always did when she left a crowded space.

She followed Reece down the long, winding hallway. Because they were partially underground, fluorescent lights kept the dorm’s ground floor brightly lit at all hours. The harsh white glow and the lack of windows to the outside world made it feel suspended in time. Déjà vu returned: It could be the August morning nine years ago when her classmates first arrived on campus and moved into identical cinder-block suites, two kids to a room. Only the silence reminded Charlotte that she was an adult who was not where she was supposed to be.

She didn’t want to go back to her room. She wasn’t ready to lie in her narrow bed unable to sleep, taunted by insecurities. She didn’t want to imagine what Ben thought of her swift retreat at the career center, or wonder if Reece’s jokes were flirtation or just kindness. Nor did she want to scroll through Roger’s email inbox to distract herself from the success of her peers. Even if she did calm down enough to drift off, Ben’s taunting, braggy voice would follow her into her dreams. She couldn’t be alone in that cinder-block box with her feelings, with this longing and fear and humiliation. Not just yet.

Without thinking, Charlotte stopped walking. Reece noticed she wasn’t following him and turned around. For a moment he just looked at her, leaned against a wall and angled toward him, a dare in her posture. Her skin felt hot as she watched his stare move from her lips to the pale arch of her neck to the slight curve of her breasts.

Her body coursed with adrenaline and cheap beer. She trembled. She felt prone, available. She wanted the distraction only he could offer her.

Let’s go back in time, Charlie.Was this what he had in mind?

Reece blinked. He didn’t walk away but something stopped him from coming closer, some hesitation she wasn’t privy to but could imagine easily enough. There were plenty of reasons why their hooking up was a bad idea. Not that long ago he fell for her, and she just let him fall.

This school belonged to her once too. Before she met Ben and lost herself, before their breakup turned campus into a haunted house of repressed trauma. She loved the vivid colors: the bright white marble of the library and the emerald green of the quad. Returning to campus after summer break had always felt like this, a mad rush of belonging and possibility as a new semester started. It welcomed her home and wrapped her up in its vivid palette.

This school taught her how to love herself for the first time. It hurt like hell to lose that feeling of belonging, but Reece had patched the wound.

He closed the distance between them. “Charlie,” he exhaled, standing close enough to touch. Desire surged up her spine like an electric shock.

She wasn’t imagining it, she knew that now. He used to look at her just like this, the two of them dancing to MGMT in his backyard, horny and drunk.

Twenty-two and hers for the taking. Twenty-seven and afraid of her, even as she knew that he wouldn’t walk away from this.

Remember that first night at Acronym when you went down on me in the bathroom,she wanted to ask, or demand. Remember how much you used to want this.

She turned her hands behind her and flattened her palms to the cinder block. She’d gone molten inside, speechless and pink. This had the ache of history. She knew exactly how brutal and tender it would be. This was college lust, no-tomorrow lust, take-me-here-and-kiss-me-hard-and-do-it-now lust. She’d honestly forgotten what this felt like.

Manhattan felt very far away, the map of her responsible adult life smudged. She couldn’t imagine the stack of Roger’s correspondence waiting on her desk. Everything that happened since graduation had been an interruption, a commercial break. She was not a cog fetching kombucha for billionaires who wanted to solve the problems of her generation without asking for their permission.

She slipped into the life of that girl again, the one she’d forgotten, the one she’d been before Roger and Brooklyn and Ben. Charlie Thorne, thorny bitch, torn jeans from Goodwill and peroxide from the box. Portraits to draw and term papers to draft and injustices to fight. She felt herself again, alive and dark and electric.

Reece still stared at her, the picture of pure want. She could tell that he was just barely holding on. She could step forward, take what she wanted and meet no protest. She knew exactly what would happen, how he’d grab her hips in his big hands and open her up. How he’d gasp her name. Reece always said her name with a certain tremor of worship.

His hands hung empty at his side, fingers twitching.

Let’s go back in time, Charlie.

Her phone trilled in her back pocket. Reece jerked, his hand curling into a fist. He frowned as she reached for the device on impulse, her fingers prepared to swipe and accept the call. She squinted through the haze of her arousal and read Roger’s name on the screen.

She sent it to voicemail, but the spell was broken. Charlotte licked her dry lips. Reece’s face had closed to her again.

Heating bill electric bill wifi bill health insurance dental insurance credit card bill art department transfer you idiot you disgrace—

What was she doing? She had so much riding on this weekend, she couldn’t afford to get distracted. She couldn’t afford to be anything but fine.

“Let me walk you home,” Reece said again.

When they reached her door, he pulled her up against him, forcing her onto her tiptoes. His face pressed against her bare neck as her hands rose to grab his shoulders. It was so much more than a hug. This was a desperate cling of if only and I want. He clutched her so tightly that she thought she might faint.

His breath caught on her neck while they clung to each other, his mouth a little open.

When he let her go, she could practically taste him, chocolate chip cookies and flavored seltzer. But just as suddenly, he stepped back. Then he turned and walked away.

She waited for him to glance over his shoulder, to steal one last look at her before he fled, but he didn’t. Reece disappeared into the stairwell, and she heard his feet hit the steps all the way to the third floor.

Charlotte wanted to sink against the door and down to the carpet. She wanted to wallow in this feeling, this abstract painting of bloodred attraction and violet regret. She wanted to go over every detail of being in his arms again.

Instead, she fished out her keys and opened the door to her and Jackie’s room. She toed out of her shoes and felt her way through the darkness to her twin XL bed. She crawled between the sheets provided by the RC committee and shuddered with shame and unfulfilled want.

She was here to work. That’s all.

Her phone screamed in her hands again. Seeing Roger’s face on the display, she shoved off the covers and threw the device across the room. It hit the wall with a satisfying smack before falling to the floor, the screen threaded with lightning cracks.

SLACK MESSAGE FROM ROGER LUDERMORE TO CHARLOTTE THORNE, 11:13 PM:found the dropbox password

TEXT MESSAGE FROM JACKIE SLAUGHTER TO CHARLOTTE THORNE, 1:02 AM:I HAVE LANDED. HEIN UNIVERSITY, GET READY.

TEXT MESSAGE FROM JACKIE SLAUGHTER TO CHARLOTTE THORNE, 1:03 AM:WOW I’m just getting all of your texts!! sorry my phone died and I packed my charger in my suitcase like a DOOFUS

TEXT MESSAGE FROM JACKIE SLAUGHTER TO CHARLOTTE THORNE, 1:04 AM:of course Reece is there, he’s our class secretary you goober

TEXT MESSAGE FROM JACKIE SLAUGHTER TO CHARLOTTE THORNE, 1:05 AM:I’ll bet my entire 401k that Thomas accidentally sinks that boat