Cambridge is bricks and ivy and wrought-iron gates. You don’t even feel like you’re in America anymore. If someone told me I was in England, I’d believe them. I know Nah misses the sunshine and the palm trees, but I don’t. I like the cold. I like places you have to work a little harder to survive in.

Castaways is across from Harvard, tucked off a side street behind the Harvard Book Store and Grolier Poetry Book Shop, Mom’s favorite. I pass a guy and his dog hunched against a brick wall with a hand-lettered sign, and I drop a dollar into his hat before pushing through the metal door, which has a porthole in its center.

The coffeehouse is large and cozy, with a small anteroom for ordering your things and then an entryway that leads into the main room, which is filled with thrift furniture and Cambridge’s weirdo hippie types mixed in with students hunched over books and laptops. The chairs and tables are mismatched, and the whole place has a nautical theme: old paintings of ships, anchors, a mermaid masthead that looms from behind the bar. It feels lived in, the hardwood floors dark and splintery.

For a second, I just breathe in the heavy scent of coffee and let Vampire Weekend wash over me. It’s very strange, to feel, at the same time, both utterly devastated and totally relaxed. I’m not sure how that’s possible. I think I need to take more biology courses.

“Welcome to the Sanctuary of the Holy Bean.”

Ben’s standing behind the scarred wooden counter, watching me. I smile. He makes me smile. This is so many fantasies coming together at once: a coffeehouse in Boston filled with people who might have read the same books as me, a boy that looks like he stepped right out of Bleach, free caffeine at my fingertips …

I’ve been on planet Earth a long time, but this is the first place that’s felt like home. Maybe it’s a sign, the kind Mom is always talking about. A sign I’m not meant to leave Boston or Hannah any time soon.

Ben has texted several times since that night Hannah broke the bottle of bourbon. Save him from these Harvard Square douches. Rescue him from the boredom of a Monday-night closing shift. Come see the cool space-inspired latte art he’s been perfecting.

I’ve always said no.

I wanted to say yes.

But his eyes are the exact shade of brown as my mother’s.

This bothers me less tonight. I like seeing her eyes in his face. They fit together.

“And you’re the high priest of this establishment?” I say.