“Thank you, stranger,” she said, and swayed, smiling against my side. “That’s very chivalrous of you, stranger.” My chest ached. I kissed the part in her curls. If either of us were a man, or even if we’d been a little older, we wouldn’t have tried to actually be friends after we stopped having sex the first time. Not right away, at least. We went to a big school, and could have faded seamlessly out of each other’s lives.

“I think I’m going to become a woman who cooks,” Harry said. “Like, really cooks.”

“You cook.” There was one month in that same fall when she came to my dorm and made dinner for both of us once a week, and left me a mountain of leftovers, sealed in Tupperwares that overtook my tiny fridge. I’d said something about how my TV dinners were making me want to shoot myself. There was one grocery store within walking distance, and it sold pouches of soup that you had to shake, frozen, out of their bags before you could microwave them, and burritos that got so hard at the corners they tasted like you were eating part of your paper plate. Harry’s food had been simple, maybe even a little bland. Chicken-and-rice dishes, pasta, the kind of biscuits that you squeezed out of a cardboard tube and then put in the oven. Warm comfort food. It was the tenderness of her doing it at all that got me. I hadn’t known she thought about me that much.

“But like really cooks,” Harry said, and showed me a book on making different kinds of pies. The index revealed that there were more kinds of pies than I’d formerly known about. “I think I’m going to become someone who hosts dinner parties, and brings in macaroons for my coworkers, and has a spice drawer.”

“I think you could do that,” I agreed. “Maybe not very big parties.” I’d seen pictures of her apartment.

“Don’t harsh my buzz.”

“Your hamster pissed on me.”

“Oh. Good girl, Emily Dickinson.”

I snorted and handed her Emily Dickinson’s purse, and she put it back on.

“The best part of moving,” Harry said, leaning against my chest, “is getting to reinvent yourself. I’m going to be someone who cooks. I’m going to buy new clothes. Maybe I’ll go by Harriet again. Or Etta. Or one of those names girls make up, like Bunny or Goldie or Mouse.”

“I’ve never heard of anyone doing that.”

Harry shrugged. “You read the wrong books. I’ll dye my hair. I’ll learn French. I’ll stop using my contacts and get glasses. I’ll make all-new friends. Next time you see me, I’ll be somebody else.”