The look on Ryan’s face is awful. It’s like the sheen of oil spreading across water, slick and shimmering. He says, “She hasn’t told you? That’s interesting. I just assumed— Anyway. Cass is gay. Or she says she is, anyway. She hasn’t ever kissed a girl, so, you know, I hold out hope for my gender. Well. To be honest, I hold out hope for myself.” He shrugs. “But the two of you experimenting together—I don’t know. It makes sense.”

Lulu is too stunned to say anything except “I hate that word. Experimenting.”

“Oh?”

“It’s not a fucking science project.”

“I guess you would know.”

Lulu hates Ryan completely. She doesn’t know anything. Her whole life has been shadowed by this inconvenient desire, a thing she doesn’t want to want and has never been able to help. Kissing Sloane wasn’t anything like pipetting in a lab; there was no science, no method. It was dropping a lit match into a pool of gasoline, the way her body leaped helplessly toward the flames.

And now the idea that Cass really would—that they really, really could— Her brain overheats at the idea of it. The thought that she could stop messing around in the shallow end of her own desires and find out what happens when she swims all the way out is dizzying, disorienting.

Ryan is still talking, somehow. “She hasn’t said anything about you either way, exactly,” he continues. “But I thought it was obvious. I just assumed you had figured it out, Lulu. I’m sorry if I was wrong.”

Not sorry for outing Cass, though, for spilling her secrets and acting like he’s handing her off to Lulu, a temporary loan, till they can get their girl-kissing out of their systems and go back to the boys they probably really wanted all along.

They’re in Ryan’s room now, and he’s handing Lulu a bottle of whiskey, a stack of cups.

She looks at the floor under their feet, the bottle in her hand, the view out the window, and thinks, Ryan owns all of this. It makes sense of him, she thinks: The possessive streak Cass mentioned on the beach is coming clear now, his selfishness matched, apparently, by a deeper vein of cruelty.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

THE REST OF the day is haunted by questions. Lulu keeps looking at Cass and wondering: Did you bring me here because you wanted me?

Did you bring me here because you knew?

Maybe it’s because Lulu is distracted, but it feels like night falls fast and sudden. Shadows slip across the concrete until they’ve swallowed the whole day.

Kiley looks it up on her phone; Ryan isn’t paying attention, and by the time he notices, she’s already putting it away. Lulu can’t help being annoyed at watching her skirt the rules.