“I’m glad,” Owen says. “But I also—I know there’s no good way to break up with someone, but I wish I hadn’t gone dark on you like that. I just needed some time, you know? I needed a minute to figure things out. But lately I’ve really been missing you, Lu. And I want us to try being friends again, if you’re interested in that.”

Lulu doesn’t know what to say.

“I get that I can’t, like, ask you for anything. So I’m not. I’m just saying: If that’s something you want, that’s something I want.”

Lulu nods. She turns back to the trees. It’s their season, and there are so many ripe oranges that she doesn’t even have to go looking for them. When she reaches, they fall right into her hand.

Owen is offering her something. It’s not what she imagined or guessed, but it’s something.

The problem is that it’s something new. Lulu has no idea what it would be like, what it would mean for them, to be friends. She could probably figure out the best way to play this, but she needs much, much more time. She feels undone by the scope of possibility, the idea that there’s some halfway point between being nothing to each other and being them again. The idea that he could want her, but not like that.

She doesn’t want to lose him, though. She knows that much.

She says, “You can help me with this, for starters.”

“Sure,” Owen says.

If they were—when they were—he would have razzed her about not answering questions, about being evasive, the same way Bea was giving her shit earlier.

Lulu thinks, Serves him right, that he can’t be familiar with her anymore. He can’t ask for more than she decides to give him.

On the other hand, now he’s just another person she has to keep a wall up with. And she already has so many of those.

CHAPTER FOUR

LULU DOESN’T TELL anyone about the specifics of her conversation with Owen. Bea is too distracted by Rich to ask on Sunday; by Monday, all anyone’s thinking about is finals, which start next week.

But the sense of detente between them seems to filter through their friends, and resettle some of the fracture their breakup caused in September. Lulu finds herself sitting at tables with the boys during lunch again. On Wednesday, Rich asks her to share her calc notes. On Friday sixth period, Jules texts her that they’re going up to the lookout to get drunk if she wants to come.

She doesn’t.