I want to tell him that he doesn’t need to be forgiven, that it’s not his fault. But I’ve already told him that, and I’m starting to think that even if I tell him again, and again and again, we’d only go around and around in the same circle.

I want to cry for him. But what good would that really do?

I want to ask him where the bottom of his pain is. Like how many kisses will he have to blow to know he’s forgiven? But it’s clear he doesn’t know that.

I want to shake him, maybe slap him, tell him that he needs to move on. But I’m afraid of how he’d turn on me.

I don’t know what to do. How can I be his everything when so much of it has nothing to do with me?

It feels terrible, but I decide there’s not much I can do about his pain and try to get out from under it by changing the subject. “Oh, and another secret: Cole and I have to decide which parent we want to live with. In what? Like, a week and a half.”

“What! That’s nuts! You told me your parents were getting divorced, but you didn’t tell me y’all had to decide who to live with.”

“Yeah, it’s complicated.”

“So how’s that even going to work? Like, where would y’all go to school?” he asks, a hint of hope in his eyes.

I wish my eyes hadn’t adjusted to the dark so I wouldn’t have had to see that. Maybe I could’ve told him the truth. I swear on a stack of a thousand notebooks I don’t want to lie to him. But what am I supposed to say? I have the option to spend senior year with you, but I’m probably gonna pass? I glance away from him and say, “Staying put. Cole and I have already agreed that switching schools on top of everything else would be too much.”

Rex pulls me close to him. “Well, at least you don’t have to deal with that.”

REX

Fuzzy hair on my face before I feel her lips.

CARLI

I kiss him a thousand times. Until I exhaust my guilt about ditching his pain. My guilt about lying. Until there is only me and Rex. And the urgent pleasure of our lips. And my insides turning colors. Brilliant colors.

REX

I open my eyes. Pull my lips away from hers. Push her hair back away from her face. My hands are shaking.

I need her to know what she’s given me.

Shaking so bad it feels like I’m taking off.

What I’ve always wanted . . . my whole life.

Like I’m blasting through dark clouds.

More than anything else.

CARLI