“He’s a good guy,” she says, pointedly. “I know him.”

I realize that Lark can absolutely be decisive when she wants to be. For example, when she wants me out of her house. When she’s reminding me that I’m her employee, not her friend.

Nod and smile? Activated. I feel ridiculous.

“Oh, yeah,” I say, stepping toward the open door. “I was being—” Honest, my brain supplies, but I don’t say it. Instead I wave a hand dismissively. I was being silly, this gesture says.

“I’ll give you a call next week,” she says as I step onto the stoop, into the late-afternoon light. She doesn’t sound much like she plans to call me next week.

“Absolutely,” I say, nodding and smiling before I walk away.

When I first moved to New York, one of the hardest things for me to get used to was not having a car.

It isn’t that I thought I needed one—there’re cabs and buses and the subway and your feet, obviously, and there’s never anywhere to put one unless you’re a billionaire or a person who doesn’t mind having a lot of unpaid parking tickets. And it isn’t that I’ve got some kind of American love affair with lengthy road trips, either, because I have a small bladder and a short attention span and also probably cannot be trusted to change a tire myself.

But getting my license at sixteen had been my most profound escape hatch, the thing that changed my life in relation to my parents’ home the most. When tension would flare between them—more and more often as I got older, though back then I didn’t really know why—I’d cheerfully call to them that I had an errand to run, or an extracurricular event at school, or some plan with Sibby. Then I’d grab the keys to my tiny, used Toyota and hit the road.

Sometimes I’d pick up Sibby; sometimes I’d go it alone. Either way, inside my car, I’d crack the windows no matter the temperature outside, a pressure release valve for all that tension, all the frustration I’d feel—at them for being so loud and messy with each other, at myself for being so quiet and accommodating. I’d queue up some pop-hits playlist, something where the beats were fast and the lyrics were easy to remember. I’d sing along, crowding out whatever words I’d heard between my parents, whatever words kicked around in my own head, desperate to be said out loud. I’d drive the suburban outerloop for as long as it’d take me to feel better.