Ben dropped my elbows and looked at me. I knew there was more going on here than met the eye. Ben was asking: Him or me?

“Sorry about all this,” I said as lightly as I could muster. “Bet you won’t come here for dinner again! I’ll call you later, okay?”

It sounded awkward, and only someone who knew him as well as I did would have noticed how Ben’s face fell, how I’d just answered the question lingering between us. I had basically said: Merit. I choose Merit.

It was crazy, because I knew Merit didn’t choose me. But as my mom always said, the heart wants what it wants; I don’t make the rules.

I watched Ben trudge up the sand toward the house. Merit sat down and patted for me to sit beside him. I did, so close that our hips were nearly touching.

He turned his head to me; I could see literally up his nose. It was clean, thank goodness. Although maybe it would have helped if he’d had a huge booger hanging out. But I think I still would have found him totally irresistible.

“Iris, do you know how lucky you are to have a mom like yours?”

I was taken aback. “Um, that was definitely not what I thought you were going to say.”

“Well, that’s what I am saying. I know we’re kind of just kids. But also, we’re old enough to know that our parents are real people, and these things affect them in a huge way. Maybe even more than us.”

“I’ve lost you,” I said.

“Look. You have your whole life ahead of you. You’ll go to college, and fall in love, and get married, and start a family—or not. I mean, whatever you want to do. I’m just saying, for example. But your mom has done all that and lost all of it.” He paused. “All of it but you.”

A knot formed low in my stomach, which was much less pleasant than the nice butterflies I’d had there for Merit earlier. “Okay, sure. Whatever. But I don’t want to move to New York. I want to stay here.”

“I want you to stay here too,” Merit said. That brought the butterflies back. “But you don’t need the mommune. You don’t need to be here. And you should take a lot of comfort in that.”

“Well, you don’t need the mommune either,” I said.

He shook his head and turned away from me, looking out over the water.

“What?” I asked. “You have a rich dad who sends you all the money you need and a mom who’s like Betty Crocker with a blog.”

He made that little snorting sound out of his nose that I loved. “Maybe now,” he said.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“Nothing. Never mind.”