“It’s about to rain,” he says with such authority that I have to laugh.

“How the hell do you know that?”

“Listen,” he says quietly, leaning sideways as if he’s extending his ear. “The crickets are chirping faster than they were before.”

I stare blankly, though admittedly, it’s hard not to grab him and kiss him because of how damn cute he is when he gets all serious like this.

He rolls his eyes and flashes that crinkly smile. “When crickets chirp faster, it means the temperature is warmer.” He points toward the sky, and I swore a second ago it was clear, if a bit hazy. “Look at the dark clouds rolling in. When it gets warm and humid like this so fast, a thunderstorm is about to roll in. Hopefully, it’ll be gone by morning.”

He sits back, and I put my feet up onto the seat and burrow into his side as he takes over rocking for us.

“Our moms and sisters are in the kitchen obsessively double- and triple-checking our flight itinerary for tomorrow.”

We leave in the morning for Los Angeles, which Rae keeps telling me is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but I know she’ll miss not having me at home while she’s still figuring out how she feels about Harry, all these months later. I know she misses him, and I can tell she loves him by the way she talks about him, like a long-lost Nicholas Sparks message in a bottle. But she has a lot of pride. Maybe time apart from each other will do her good.

My all-expenses-paid summer internship with Professor McPherson at her animation studio starts in two days, and Jack managed to get an internship at a small literary agency in Hollywood. He told his parents it was a coincidence that I was going to be in LA at the same time, but he could have easily found an internship on the East Coast, in Boston or New York. He chose me. And I’m pretty sure his parents, who are actually not the assholes I thought they were that day in the dining hall, saw right through Jack’s hetero-charade. At the start of the spring semester, his father apologized for the comments he made when they came to visit CIA. I think being here and seeing their family dynamic has allowed me to understand all the god stuff more, especially because they told me their family now attends an LGBTQ-friendly church. Still, they’re giving him money to sublet an apartment with me for two months. His dad even sat both of us down to give us a “this is a very adult decision” talk, but we assured him that it’s only for the summer, and we’re not living together at CIA for the fall semester. I could never leave Benny; I’m bonded to him for life.