AFTER A VERY AWKWARD meal of dry turkey and stilted conversation, Fletch and I agree to go get Velma from her parents’ and just go home. We needed to be together. We needed to be home. Our home.

There was very little talking in the car. When we get in the house, Penelope’s phone rings. She looks hopeful for a second, but then shakes her head. “It’s not Jenna.”

She takes her bag into her room while she answers the call, and I throw myself onto the couch. “This sucks. You okay, man?”

“We should have just told everyone from the beginning. Now it seems like we were ashamed.”

“Well for a while, you were.”

He chews the inside of his cheek. “I don’t know what the right thing is.” Usually when he gets all glowering like this, I invite him to shoot zombies on the big screen with me. I don’t think that will do it right now, and I find myself wondering if I’m supposed to hug him. Is that part of this now? He said relationship, and included me, and that wigs me the fuck out, to be honest. But he’s the best dude I know and doesn’t deserve this shit and I kind of wish that putting my arm around him would be the thing that would make him feel better. Since I’m not sure it wouldn’t make things weird, I keep it to myself.

Penelope comes out of her room with a tight jaw and a white face. “That was housing. My roommate, Sami, isn’t coming back to school after the break. They said they know I haven’t been staying there, but that I can move back in if I want to. That I’ll get a new roommate at semester.”

I’m more torn than I thought I would ever be about her moving out. It almost seems like this is destiny saying to break it off now. Maybe she can patch things up with Jenna. Maybe she can have a more normal college experience, living in the dorms and not fucking two guys.

But I don’t want her to go. I really don’t want her to go.

My heart just ices up at the thought. I promised myself I would never do this. That relationships are bad news. That life was meant to be fun and settling down is the opposite of that. No responsibilities means never letting anyone down. Not being in a relationship means I wouldn’t have the opportunity to hurt someone. To be weak like my old man.

“What do you want to do?” Fletch asks her in his cool, authoritative tone. I want to fucking punch him in the neck for it. Why isn’t he begging her to stay? He’s the one who should be good at this. For convincing her that this is what she wants and needs.