He stepped outside and closed the door behind him. He hurried down the cracked-concrete path. Rachel and I caught up to him.

“What are you doing here?” Jared asked.

“We’re friends of Ema’s,” I said.

“So?”

“You know who she is, right?”

He didn’t reply.

“Jared?”

“Yeah, I know who she is. So what?”

Jared looked at his front door as though expecting it to open. He picked up the pace. We kept up with him. When we reached the corner, he stopped abruptly.

“What’s this about?” Jared asked me. “I got to get to work at the club soon.”

Now that I had him in front of me, listening, I wasn’t sure how to put it. “You, uh, had a relationship with her,” I began.

“With Ema, you mean?”

“Yes.”

He shrugged. “We communicated online, I guess.”

“Just communicated?”

Jared looked over at Rachel, then back at me. “Why is this your business?”

Fair question.

Rachel said, “She’s worried about you.”

“Who?”

“Who do you think?” I snapped. “Ema.”

“And how does any of this concern you two?”

“You were ‘communicating’”—I made quote marks in the air—“online, right?”

“What if I was?”

“Well, Jared, you just stopped cold. Why?”

He shook his head slowly. “What’s your name again? Never mind. This is really none of your business.” He turned toward Rachel and his face softened. “No offense to you, Rachel, but I’m not sure it’s your business either.”

“Didn’t forget her name,” I mumbled.

“What?”

I stepped up to him. “You don’t do that to a person,” I said.

“Do what?”

“You don’t just stop communicating with someone like that. You don’t just disappear and not tell the other person. You don’t just leave them hanging like that. It’s mean.”

“‘It’s mean’?” he repeated, turning toward Rachel. “Is he for real?”

“I agree with him,” Rachel said.

That made him swallow. “Wait, I did send her an e-mail. Maybe, I don’t know, maybe it got stuck in her spam folder or something.”

“Yeah,” I said in a voice dripping with sarcasm, “that seems likely.”

There was a sound that drew his attention. I looked behind me to see what it was. The front door opened. A woman I assumed was his mother was standing in the doorway. “Everything okay, Jared?”

“Fine, Ma.” Then in a quieter voice to us: “I have to go.”

I stepped in his path. I didn’t exactly block him, but the move definitely had some force behind it. “Wait a second,” I said. “The two of us came a long way.”

“For what?” he asked.

I looked at Rachel. She looked at me. I didn’t have an answer. Jared Lowell wasn’t missing. He wasn’t in danger. He was, it seemed, a jerk, but that didn’t make him in need of rescue.

“Why did you stop communicating with Ema?” I asked again.