“Well, first of all, because it’s not ours. We already broke into their house and are eating their food. We do not need to also steal their expensive whisky like an Adult Swim Goldilocks.”

“I’ll replace it.” Jack hunts for two clean glasses. “What else are we going to do for the night if we don’t drink this?”

“Sit in terrible silence while contemplating the cosmic clusterfuck that put us in this position?”

“Exactly.” She nods. “Instead, we’re going to drink a little bit of whisky and do the queer-women thing.”

I focus on stirring the soup, and not on thinking about how I wish the queer-women thing meant something else. “What, uh, do we have to talk about?”

“Elle.” Jack pushes a glass with three fingers of whisky into my hands. “Come on.”

“Fine. I know we have a lot to talk about, but can we eat first?”

Jack props her body against the counter behind her and leans, goddamn her. “Yeah, we can eat first.”

We take our gourmet meal of soup that is somehow both too salty and too bland—and crackers that contain the same inexplicable flavor palette—over to the fire, eating on the floor close to the heat. “Can I ask you something?” Jack starts, washing down the soup with a swig of whisky.

I also take a sip of whisky. It tastes like barbecued nail polish remover and goes straight to my head. Why does anyone drink hard alcohol neat? “I haven’t finished eating yet,” I argue, using the dregs of my soup as protection from a conversation I don’t want to have.

Jack asks anyway, lingering soup be damned. “Do you think my mom will ever leave my dad?”

“Oh.” It’s not what I expected, and I take another drink of my whisky even though I despise it. “I don’t know their marriage well enough to say. Relationships are complex.”

Jack lounges back on her elbows, her long legs stretching in front of her, feet bobbing up and down to an unheard beat. I stare at the tattoos visible from where she’s pushed her sweatshirt up to her elbows. And people are always making a fuss about male forearms, which, sure, are nice, but have these people never seen the tattooed forearms of a butch lesbian? The sleek, slender line of the humerus, the sharp jut of the wristbone, the vulnerable dip of the inside elbow, the contrast of strength and softness. Jack’s lean muscles and her delicate wrists.

“I’m worried she’s going to stay in a relationship that doesn’t make her happy because it’s safe,” Jack says, looking directly at me. Because we’re not talking about Katherine at all. Three fingers of whisky is never going to be enough for the coming conversation, and I reach for the bottle and give us each a splash more.