She was a very attractive person. Not just because she was dimply and smiley and bosomy and smart, but because she was so awkward and filterless, saying each and every thought, however fragmented, that entered her brain. She made Roy feel almost cool.

“Is it a film?”

“Yeah. It’s from the seventies, or maybe early eighties, and kind of so bad it’s good. It’s about two teenagers who get shipwrecked and have to survive on a deserted island. They’re children when it starts, but then they go through puberty. She gets her period and boobs. His voice changes. Eventually they figure out how to have sex. They keep doing it so much she gets pregnant and they have a baby. She breastfeeds it. There’s even this weird scene when the baby appears to be swimming in the ocean on its own before it can really walk. I’ve been pushing for that movie to be shown to the whole fifth grade instead of the dumb sex-ed class they do in like forty-five minutes the second-to-last day of school, but the assistant principal thought it was inappropriate. She’s from Staten Island and super Catholic and conservative. I made my son watch it when he was eleven. I think it was sort of liberating for him but also really scary. Your character Ceran totally reminds me of my son—so little confidence and self-awareness he appears almost stupid. But I guess you were a teenage boy once too, not that long ago. You know what you’re writing about.”

“Not really,” Roy disagreed. “Not at all, actually.”

Peaches stopped talking. Roy Clarke made her nervous. He was either completely brilliant or just a very lucky clueless person—she couldn’t tell. His pages were like a script for a movie that would never get made. But if she tried to write a book, it wouldn’t make any sense either. And what was her problem anyway? Did she have to be so critical? Why was she so competitive? Yes, for the five minutes that she’d actually attended college she’d thought she wanted to be a writer, but she was a nurse now. Roy Clarke was a real writer and he’d asked her to read his pages, which was amazing. But it was also confusing. Surely he could have asked someone more qualified.

Roy couldn’t believe Nurse Peaches had a son, certainly not a teenager. He’d thought she was about twenty-seven.

“It’s on TV sometimes, The Blue Lagoon,” Peaches rambled on. “Probably no one in England has ever seen it.” She crouched down to open the bar fridge, looking for boiled eggs, but the fridge’s shelves were bare. She slammed the door closed again and stood up. “It’s not, like, good cinema or anything—it’s really cheesy. But it is educational.”

“I can’t believe you have a teenage son,” Roy said. “You’re what, twenty-five?”