“I guess this is his place,” Lulu says. “He can do whatever he wants.”

“Exactly.”

Lulu sets up so that she’s facing Cass, sitting on the ground with her back against the balcony railings.

“Noooo,” Cass says. “You can’t sit that way! You’re missing the best part.”

“I wanted to keep the sun out of my face.”

“Don’t be a baby. Put your sunglasses on.”

“What if I don’t have sunglasses?” Lulu asks, just to be annoying.

Cass looks over the brim of her own pair, down at Lulu.

“Fine,” Lulu says. She finds them in her bag and puts them on before turning around so she and Cass are facing the same way. “Now, what am I looking for?”

“The view.”

The Hotel stretches out below them, a spread of white stone against the green and ochre of the winter hillside. Lulu feels like she’s sitting inside of the curved cup of a bowl. The sun on her face is syrupy golden. She closes her eyes and lets it wrap around her limbs, slow and thick as honey.

“How are you doing?” Cass asks.

Lulu leans back against the door, letting the glass take her weight. “You know,” she says. “I’m good.”

“Cool.”

Cass doesn’t say anything else.

“My sister’s home,” Lulu says.

“From college?”

“Yeah.”

Cass nods. “My brother too.”

“Are you guys close?”

“We get along.”

“Naomi and I don’t, always.”

Cass takes this in. “Do you fight?”

“No. We just—” Lulu lets the sentence drop.

“I thought about you the other night,” Cass says.

Lulu concentrates on staying still and neutral when she says, “Oh?”

“Is that weird? I know we don’t know each other that well.”

“Depends on why you were thinking about me.” It’s hotter out here than Lulu would have guessed, once you sit for a while. Her thighs prickle with heat under her jeans. She wishes she’d worn a dress.

“Dylan—my brother—he was talking about his girlfriend. The way he described her reminded me of you.”

Lulu goes for the easy thing, which is a joke. “Too cool for her own good?” she asks.

“No,” Cass laughs. “That’s not what he said.”

“What did he say?”

“I don’t know,” Cass says. Lulu doesn’t believe her. “Hey, you want anything? Water? Weed?”

Lulu almost says yes without thinking about it, the same way that, when Cass asked her how she was, she automatically said, You know. I’m good. The rules say: If Cass is stoned, she should be stoned. The rules say: Being fucked up is cooler than being sober, and gives you an excuse if you’re a little weird too.

But she doesn’t want to be high right now. She wants to sit in this quiet sunlight with Cass and talk to her slowly, their conversation going wherever it goes. She wants—she wants—nothing she’s ready to name.