Months later over a different pancake breakfast at a diner in the Bronx, Dustin finally sacked up and asked his brother Nicholas if he was still clean despite having been ejected from rehab early. The amount of relief that he felt when his brother told him he was still hanging on was enormous. His exact words were, “Dude, you think I’d be working at a taco shop if I was using?” Dustin’s second question was whether Nicholas felt like he was ready to see their mom, and Nicholas said he’d be open to it if she was, but he needed Dustin to be there, too. Dustin agreed to talk to their mom about it when he took her out for V-Day dinner, not wanting her to be alone for the holiday, or himself for that matter.

Dustin was in the denial stage of his grief over Kimmie. He had decided that Valentine’s Day morning at the florist, when he was picking up flowers for his mother, that it was ridiculous to have become so obsessed with a girl he barely even knew. He felt even more ridiculous for having convinced himself he was in love with her. Dustin soothed himself by saying that Kimmie’s purpose in his life was not so that he might experience romantic love for the first time, but perhaps to be a distraction from endlessly worrying about his brother and whether he had given up two years of college tuition for nothing.

These were lies Dustin told himself standing before all the red roses that filled the store. But sometimes he knew it was best to believe the stories you told yourself in order get through a day. After all, didn’t the cornerstone of sober living preach getting through life one day at a time?

VII

Lolly knew there were haters out there who wondered how she’d managed to land a hottie like Steven. Well, it wasn’t luck, because Lolly worked very hard to get one of the most eligible boys in the city. Lolly knew she wasn’t naturally beautiful herself, but what she lacked in nature’s gifts, she more than made up for in effort. Lolly was “money pretty,” and she knew it. Her hair had four-hundred-dollar highlights and was cut every eight weeks. Her nails were always perfect and done in the latest fashion. She had gotten a nose job during middle school and even though she requested Reese Witherspoon’s nose and ended up with Michelle Williams’s slightly thinner nose instead, she accepted it gracefully. Lolly had been on a diet since she was thirteen, went to SoulCycle three times a week, did a hundred sit-ups every night before bed, and even secretly bought some waist-shaping bodywear she saw advertised on Instagram that supposedly tightened her core as she slept.