She was the one who knew him now—the one who sat on the arm of the couch with her hand tangled in his hair while he pretended to like it. The one who wore his stupid oversized hoodies and made him laugh in a way I hadn’t seen in months.

It was supposed to stop hurting. But here I was—hundreds of miles from home, sitting in the backseat of a car with a new boyfriend, and still...my chest felt hollow.

“Jamal,” Tiffany sighed from the passenger seat, dragging out his name like she’d been storing up the irritation for hours. “Would you stop checking the mirror every two seconds?”

“I’m just making sure they’re keeping up,” he shot back, like that was a reasonable excuse for swerving every time he glanced over his shoulder.

“They’re not gonna get lost.” Her sunglasses slipped down her nose again, and she shoved them up with a dramatic huff.

“You don’t know that,” Jamal said, adjusting the rearview mirror. “Blake drives like a grandma.”

“Maybe,” Tiffany said, “but I’d rather sit through that than this backseat rollercoaster you’ve got going on.”

“Why don’t you take the wheel, then?”

“I would, if you’d let me!”

“Oh my God,” I sighed from the backseat. “Can you two just kiss and get it over with?”

Tiffany twisted her whole body in her seat just to glare at me. “Disgusting,” she said. “I would never⁠—”

“Relax,” I muttered. “I’m kidding.”

Jamal was grinning like an idiot. “She’s thinking about it now.”

Tiffany narrowed her eyes at him. “I would rather die alone in a house full of cats than even consider⁠—”

“Don’t drag cats into this,” Jamal cut in. “They deserve better.”

Nathan had his arm draped casually over the back of my seat, his fingers brushing my shoulder every time we hit a bump in the road. He was easy like that—always finding little ways to touch me, always grinning at me like he knew exactly what he was doing. He smelled like citrus and the faintest trace of cologne, like he had actually put effort into smelling good even though we’d been in the car for hours. Every so often, I felt his gaze slide toward me, like he was waiting for me to look at him.

When I finally did, he grinned. “You excited?” he asked, his voice low as he reached over to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear. “You ever been to Mexico before?”

I gave him a small smile. “Once, when I was a kid. My parents took me to Rosarito for a weekend. But I barely remember it.”

“Well, lucky for you, I happen to know all the best spots.”

“Oh, yeah?”