“Holy shit, has Nick hit you?” Kimmie asked. “Because that’s really not okay, Natalia.”

Natalia swore Nick had never laid a finger on her, which made him her first boyfriend who hadn’t. “Nick’s been clean for a while, but junkies are unpredictable. So who knows what he’s like when he falls off the wagon. No way I’m letting my guard down. But something tells me he doesn’t have that in him.”

“He seems like he really loves you,” Kimmie said, not caring that her voice sounded dreamy and wistful. She had seen the way Nick looked at Natalia and even though she had been making a real effort only to move forward these days, there was something in it that reminded her of the way that Dustin had looked at her when they went to Serendipity 3 for hot chocolate. It seemed so long ago, but the memory of it was as clear as a church bell on a quiet Sunday morning.

Her therapist had told her that it wasn’t good to label your memories as either good or bad, but to be able to see them from an objective viewpoint where something could be positive and negative at the same time. So even though she had been lumping that hot chocolate night with Dustin as a bad memory because of Vronsky, she was now able to see it was okay to remember it as good memory, too. She then told Natalia about Dustin, marveling at how she had been so clueless when it came to boys, but knowing it was pointless to want a “do-over.”

“Don’t beat yourself up. You don’t even want to know the number of dickheads I’ve been with. And I’ve had tons of boys tell me they loved me, but Nicky’s the only one I’ve ever really believed. I wake up in the middle of the night and catch him staring at me. It’s sweet, but also a little psychotic. I find it hot AF. You can’t blame a girl for whatever rando thing she finds romantic. Some girls like flowers and chocolates, while others get off on having their bf get the high score on Ms. Pac-Man at a shitty pizza place and putting in NLN, for ‘Nick loves Natalia,’ instead of his own initials.”

Kimmie laughed with Natalia, and she realized how long it had been since she laughed with a friend and how much she missed it.

IX

Kimmie’s father was supposed to fly out, pick her up, and bring her home, but the night before he was set to leave, Kimmie’s Stepmonster broke a heel coming out of a restaurant and face-planted into the sidewalk, busting her collagen lips and breaking several teeth.