The world starts spinning again, tilting, knocking me sideways with its centripetal force. Does she not remember me?

What if she doesn’t remember me?

What if, to Jack, I was one of many nameless, faceless women she brought back to her Airstream? What if to her, what happened between us was ordinary and entirely unremarkable, and she forgot about it instantly, while I’ve been carrying it around in my heart for a year?

That would be… even more humiliating than what happened the morning after.

“It’s—it’s Ellie,” I stammer, and I wait for recognition to jar across her features.

“Ellie,” she repeats, as if the name means nothing to her. Then her skin envelops mine in a handshake. Her hand is cold and callused, and I don’t look down at the familiar shape of it. I tell myself to feel nothing, standing in this cabin, shaking the hand of this woman who doesn’t remember me.

“And this is… Dylan,” Andrew says, and I quickly drop Jack’s hand. Andrew is gesturing to someone who must’ve come in with Jack, but I was too distracted to notice. They wear steel-toed boots and what appears to be a homemade anti-fascist T-shirt with an illustration of a beheaded Alexander Hamilton. I take in the rest of them: giant gauges, the faintest stubble along a fine jaw, at least three facial piercings, and a neck tattoo of a knife against brown skin.

“Oh, hi!” I say to Dylan Montez, Jack’s childhood best friend.

Dylan eyes me skeptically. “Are you okay?” they ask in a scratchy voice, and I wonder what’s worse: the way I’m blushing or the way I’m sweating.

I press the back of my hand to my forehead. “Low blood sugar, I think.”

Low blood sugar and seeing the ghost of one-night stands past.

“Don’t worry. Dinner is almost ready,” Katherine announces, darting into the kitchen with Lovey on her heels. Meemaw quickly follows, muttering something about another batch of sangria in the fridge.

“It’s nice to meet you.” I outstretch my hand again, this time toward Dylan. “I’m Ellie.”

Dylan stares down at my hand like it’s something grotesque they wouldn’t touch in full PPE. Then, slowly, their eyes flit up my body. They seem thoroughly unimpressed by what they see. Still, they refuse to take my hand, so it dangles there like a dead fish between us.

“Dylan.” Jack releases a warning puff of air. “Tone down the open hostility just a bit.”

“What?” Dylan holds up two hands apologetically without actually looking remotely apologetic. “Come on. Andrew brings home some woman we’ve never heard of and we’re just supposed to act like that’s normal?”

Andrew pinches the bridge of his nose. “I knew you were going to be like this,” he mutters under his breath.