She’s glad it looks so normal. The Hotel she wants to revisit doesn’t exist anymore, for anyone. In Ryan’s room, a laptop is sitting on the desk, its screen black with sleep. It’s hard not to look at it and see the evidence of how Ryan thought he was master of this space: that he could know everything that happened in it. But that’s not what happened—that’s not what’s happening now.

He saw things, but he couldn’t control them. He couldn’t stop her and Cass from finding each other, or from falling into each other. And he can’t stop them now from saying this last goodbye and leaving, and never, ever coming back.

Lulu goes downstairs, out the front door. She’s trying to be quiet, but as soon as she walks outside and hears Ryan’s voice she knows he’s not listening for anything. He and Cass are over by the pool, but in the silence of the afternoon his words echo off the concrete, bouncing right to her.

“What was I supposed to do, Cass?” he’s saying. “I was just trying to show you what it was like on the outside. What it looked like looking in on you, like some stranger. I didn’t want to hurt you. I really didn’t.”

“Well, you did.” Cass’s voice is fluorescent with pain.

Ryan says something indistinct.

Lulu walks closer.

“. . . I wanted you to see that you were hurting me,” Ryan is saying, when she can hear him clearly again. “I didn’t know how else to make you see that, Cass. You just brought her here. You didn’t even ask! And then it was like I didn’t matter anymore. Like we, what we were—”

“Nothing changed!” Cass says. “You were still my best friend. I told you that, Ryan.”

“We weren’t just friends. You know we weren’t.”

“Maybe that’s how you felt about it,” she says. “But for me, we were. I’m sorry if that wasn’t enough for you. I’m sorry if I couldn’t be what you thought I’d be for you, or what you wanted, but—Ryan. It wasn’t ever going to happen between us like that.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I don’t know what I want?”

“You don’t know the future,” Ryan says. He sounds petulant, childish. “You don’t know.”

“I’m gay, Ry,” Cass says. “That doesn’t have anything to do with you or Lulu. It’s not gonna change. It’s just a fact.”

“You were gay when I met you,” Ryan says. “That didn’t used to stop you from loving me.”