Lulu thinks she knows why he’s laughing: Because it’s absurd for them to hug and absurd for them not to. It doesn’t change all of the easy, intimate ways they used to touch each other, or the fact that they aren’t touching each other that way anymore. Because they’re trying to find their way to a friendship they never had, which, in the face of what they had instead, feels like nothing much at all.

From inside the circle of his arms, all she can think is that Owen smells so familiar. Lulu knows plenty of people’s shampoo, their soap, their perfume or cologne, but Owen she knows all the way down to the salt of his sweaty, sleepless skin.

No one knows what they’re doing right now, or where they are. For the next thirty seconds, she thinks, there are no rules. Maybe that means there are no consequences either.

Lulu doesn’t think Owen can feel the fleeting kiss she brushes against the cotton of his shirt. She’s careful where he was rough; the motion is meant mostly for herself, instead of him. “Of course I will,” she says.

CHAPTER EIGHT

“OH GOOD,” LULU’S dad says when he sees her. He’s standing in the kitchen in suit pants and a crisp white button-down. The remnants of a family breakfast are still on the table next to him. “Get dressed. We’re going to be late.”

“Where are we going?” Lulu asks stupidly. He’s always doing this: assuming she just, like, knows what his plans are.

“Temple,” her dad says.

“Temple?” Lulu repeats. She understands what he means in a literal sense, but she’s still confused: They haven’t gone to a Saturday morning service at Shaare Tikvah since she turned thirteen, and Olivia’s too young for pre–Bat Mitzvah stuff yet.

“Yes, Lulu, temple,” he repeats. “Go get dressed.”

“I don’t feel great—” she starts.

“I’m sure you don’t,” he says. “You should probably shower if you can do it quickly. Rinse off, at least.”

“I really don’t—”

“Don’t waste time.”

Lulu could stand here arguing with him, but she knows from long experience that she’d just end up getting thrown into a dress and packed into the car at the last minute anyway, so she salutes him and turns to head upstairs to her room.

Twenty minutes later Lulu’s hair is in a wet knot on top of her head and she’s wearing a new sundress with an old cardigan. Her face looks bare without any makeup, but there wasn’t time to put any on, and she was almost glad. Something about the idea of crusting herself up again—caking her eyelashes, her cheekbones, her lips—felt extra-nauseating.