Bea nods like, Well, yeah. There’s value in predictable, and they both know what it is. Rich is definitely someone who follows the rules.

“He says they all passed out at Patrick’s last night,” Bea reports, and she doesn’t have to clarify who we is for Lulu to know who she means. Rich, their friend Jules, and probably Owen too. “They’re thinking about breakfast. Would it be, like, way too weird if I invited them over?”

Lulu shrugs.

Bea puts her phone down more decisively this time. “You know this is up to you, Lu. I’m not bringing people to your house if you don’t want them here. I just thought, I don’t know. You might want to.” There’s a phrase that’s left unsaid in Bea’s sentence: You might want to see people again, be social, pretend things are fine, talk to Owen. Stop being such a recluse.

Lulu knows she’s being unfair by not giving a straight answer. Bea’s trying to be a good friend. It’s not her fault that Lulu just wants someone else to make this decision for her so that she won’t have to be responsible for whatever the consequences turn out to be.

She doesn’t think she’s wrong that Owen’s been looking for a way to un–break up with her for the last few weeks. He’s definitely been trying to talk to her about something, and what else could it be?

It’s just that at no point, in all of those days and nights, has she been able to figure out if she wants to let him or not.

It seems like the right thing to do.

She liked dating Owen the first time. Why wouldn’t she like doing it again?

She would definitely like how much easier it would make her life.

“No one will think less of you,” Bea says, a little softer. “It’s not like he— Everyone knows you guys were in love. I don’t think you should be embarrassed to take him back.”

Again, Lulu knows what Bea isn’t saying: It’s not like he embarrassed you. Of course it wasn’t. It was Lulu who hurt and embarrassed Owen, so badly that he ended things.

But maybe he’s over that, and now he wants things back the way they were.

“He was knocking on doors looking for you last night,” Bea says. “He was the one who found me, and told me you were, like, actually gone.”

“Found you—”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Bea says. “We had not considered that we might want to make sure we’d actually locked the door of the room we were using.”

“I don’t want to think about it either,” Lulu says. “Anyway, of course it’s fine. Invite them over. It’s always fun to have them here.”