His backpack is slung over one shoulder, his crimson and white Clifford High hoodie stretched taut across his broad shoulders. He looks good. Not at all like he’s upset about our breakup.

“I just caught Beckett breaking into your car.”

“I wasn’t—”

Jake’s focus drops to the tool in my hand, and I give up on my denial. “How do you even know how to do that?”

I shrug. “My mom’s a cop.”

Fact-Check Rating: True, but misleading.

My mother is a cop, but she refused to teach me how to break into a car when I decided I needed that bit of knowledge a few years ago. Fortunately, unlike parents, YouTube has never once disappointed a mischievous seventh grader.

Doug crosses his arms over the front of his uniform. “In the state of Tennessee, entering a passenger vehicle without permission from the owner constitutes burglary.”

“But, Officer, I haven’t entered his car.” I spread my arms to emphasize that I’m still standing in the parking lot. Outside of Jake’s beat-up old Camry.

Jake snorts. “Looks like your slim jim entered my car.”

Doug nods. “That counts.”

“Actually, it doesn’t, unless I entered the vehicle with intent to commit a felony, theft, or assault. And since I had no such intent”—I shrug, and my tool bobs with the motion, drawing their attention again—“no crime has been committed.”

Jake groans. “Tell me she’s wrong.”

“Well, technically …” Doug scowls at me. “What the hell were you doing breaking into his car, if you weren’t going to take something?”

“I was going to leave something.”

“You were gonna—?”

“Here, hold this.”

I hand my slim jim to the nice police officer, and he accepts it out of misplaced courtesy a second before it occurs to him that he’s now holding the tool of my criminal trade. I’m pretty sure that counts as tampering with evidence. He really should have known better.

Before he can object, I pick up my cardboard box. “Jake and I broke up last night—”

“She dumped me.”

“—and I was just returning the things he left at my house.”

I hand the box to Jake, who takes it because it’s evidently human nature to take whatever someone hands you, before you think better of it.

Doug glances into the box and coughs to disguise a laugh. “Is that …?”

“Jake’s copy of Sex for Dummies? Yes.”

It was a Dirty Santa gift he stole from his cousin. We spent hours leafing through it, highlighting and laughing at the instructions, tips, and suggestions. Secretly vowing to try them.

Jake’s face flames, and I realize this may be the shittiest thing I’ve ever done to someone, exposing a vulnerable, intimate moment from our private relationship to the light of day. And to Officer Doug Chalmers.

But I can’t feel too bad about that, because what Jake did to me was way worse.