“Don’t watch!” Jojo said, giving me a shove.

“Why not?” I said. But I looked away.

Our subway station was aboveground, and we stood shivering on the platform. We should have worn pants; the thin layer of daytime warmth had dissipated now that it was night. I looked at Jojo, her jaw clenched, the muscles there giving off little tremors. Her legs were goosebumped. I wanted to wrap my arms around her. I went up to the side of the track, peering into the darkness. No train.

“Don’t stand so close, didn’t you read about that woman who got pushed onto the tracks last week and died?” Jojo said.

“Right,” I said. I lingered for a moment more, hoping the train would come; I wanted to be the first to see its twin lights winking from far away. My chariot, I would think, as if I had summoned it, staring it in the eyes as they broadened into bright circles, bringing with them the dual smack of sound and wind. But the tracks remained desolate. I stepped back toward Jojo.

My phone buzzed: Sam.

Last night wuz fun.

Jojo had told me he had a habit of “ironically” using colloquial misspellings from the early 2000s. Into my mind flooded his goofy, too-wide smile, his eagerness, the way he’d possessively cupped the back of my arm with his hand. I cringed. It had been late when I’d asked him to leave, the sky already threading through with light. I was desperate that Jojo not find out—or maybe I just needed to be free of him, from his sweaty flesh pressing into my back, his arm draped over my side, straitjacketing me. I’d made up something about how I wasn’t ready to just sleep together yet, that it would be mortifying for him to hear me mumble in my dreams—something that made me seem tender. Whatever: he had left. Another buzz. I looked at my phone: the kissing emoji, his mouth pursed into a farcical chicken beak, from which emerged a tiny floating red heart. One of the emoji’s eyes was closed while the other remained open. I knew this was meant to be read as a wink, but to me the image resembled a spy, faking the abandon of a loving kiss to distract us while his one open eye, alert, roved around for his next mark.

“What?” Jojo said, arching over my phone.

“Nothing,” I said, but she had seen it.

“‘Last night wuz fun’! Aw, Sam. Tell him to come,” she said, and then looked at me hard, like it was a challenge.

“Maybe,” I said, and forced a smile.

“Why,” she said, “you want to see who else is there?”

“No,” I said, and I could feel my heart begin to race, “it’s just that I might stop by Celeste’s for only a little bit and then go to my parents’ for dessert, and I wouldn’t want to invite him and have him get there and then, you know, I’d already—”