“I think I need the word between like and love, which means . . .”

“ ‘I hold her in great esteem,’ ” I say with a smile.

Never, in the history of time, has a breakup been so gentle. There’s barely a ripple in the water. So maybe we were barely together enough to even break.

“Do you love me?” he asks, brows pulled together.

“I’m not sure.”

“Which means no,” he says, smiling.

“I love you . . . as a friend,” I say. “I love Phoebs. I love how easy this is, and how little it requires of me right now.”

He’s nodding. He gets it.

“But trying to imagine this”—I gesture between us—“for the rest of my life?” I say, kissing his forehead. “It’s sort of depressing. It feels like we’re both headed down the path of least resistance.”

“Mace?”

“Hmm?”

“Isn’t the path of least resistance for you the one with Elliot?” he asks.

I go still, thinking of the best answer here. In some ways, yeah, of course, falling into Elliot’s bed would be the easiest route, and Sean knows it. There’s no reason not to be honest there.

But there’s a part of me that believes Elliot and I were always only meant to be best friends. I was so scared of taking that next step with him when we were teens, and as soon as we did, it fell apart.

“We have history,” I say carefully. “Not bad history, for the most part. But he fucked up. And I fucked up. And we haven’t really discussed that.”

“Why not?”

God. The most simple, obvious question.

“Because . . .” I start. “Because, I don’t know . . . that time in my life was really hard, and I made some bad decisions that I don’t really know how to explain. Apparently I’m also mostly dead inside and not really great with expressing the emotions.”

He sits up, looking at me earnestly. “You know what? If Ashley came home, and was totally clean, and said that to me—‘Sean, I made some bad decisions. I don’t know how to explain them’—I think that would be enough.”

“Really?” I ask.

He nods. “I miss her.”

I wrap my arms around him, holding him against my chest. I don’t think Sean has ever cried about Ashley leaving, or about the very real possibility that she’ll never come back. Or the even more horrible likelihood that the doorbell will ring someday and it will be her asking for money.

Or, even worse, that there will be a policeman there, telling Sean that she’s gone for good.

“Stay my friend?” I ask.

“Yeah,” he whispers, pressing his face into my neck. “Yeah, I need that, too.”

I move out a few days later. It really just entails me packing up the two suitcases I brought here a few months ago and moving about six blocks away. For less than seven hundred a month, I’m renting the spare bedroom at Nancy Eaton’s place—she’s a physician on the unit, and her daughter just left for college back east. It’s a temporary situation; not because Nancy hasn’t offered the room indefinitely, but because it feels that way. I own a house in Berkeley and could easily sell it and buy a place in the city, but even the thought feels like a betrayal. I could rent out the house and afford to rent my own place in the city, but that would require me going through all of my parents’ things, and I’m not ready for that, either.