Since I started the dishwasher earlier, I handwash the glass and stick it in the drain rack. After drying my hands on a clean dishtowel and looping it over the oven handle, I turn back around. “I’m going to bed.”

Holden has blue eyes. Every time I look in them, especially when we’re alone, I feel like I’m drowning in their depths. Fathomless and potentially devastating, just like the sea or the sky.

He picks at the orange label on his bottle of beer as he studies me. “You ever going to tell Sydney you don’t sleep when you’re over here?”

“You ever going to stop getting drunk and playing ball in the middle of the night?”

Holden’s lips quirk. The small movement is not quite a smile or a scowl. Just a response—a reaction. An acknowledgement I spoke, and he listened. From most people, it would be meaningless. From him, it feels meaningful. “Good night, flower.”

I brush past him and hurry out of the kitchen as quickly as I can without appearing to run away. Even if that’s exactly what I’m doing.

I hate how, despite never speaking to me most days, he knows my insomnia is worst when I’m sleeping somewhere different than my own bed. It doesn’t seem to matter that it’s a familiar place—Sydney and I have been having sleepovers since our parents decided we were old enough to in third grade. They’ve been a regular occurrence ever since, considering we live just across the street from one another.

The stairs creak as I creep up them, but I’m not worried about waking anyone up. Unlike me, Sydney sleeps soundly no matter what. Holden and Sydney’s father, Joe, is gone for work, like usual. And Holden is downstairs and awake, doing…I have no idea what.

Maybe he’s texting Grace.

Hopefully he’s icing his face.

I’ve never gone to the old high school’s basketball court where Holden and his friends allegedly spend most of their free time, so I have no idea how every pickup game seems to involve some sort of injury. I’ve seen Holden play on the school team in past seasons. He’s fast. Agile.

Those games end unscathed. They also have actual referees, not drunk high schoolers shouting “Foul!” whenever they feel like it.

Sydney is sprawled out on her four-poster bed when I enter her room, snoring softly. Lily, the Adamses’ dog, is curled up on the fluffy rug beneath the window. She raises her head when I enter the room and then lays it back down when she recognizes me. I close Sydney’s bedroom door behind me and crawl onto the air mattress, settling on the inflated rectangle with a sigh as I slip under the sheets and pull the blankets up over me.