“I’m never going to hear the end of this, you know. Like—you’re the one who broke the window, but I’m the one who’s going to have to live with the consequences. My family’ll never let me forget it. They already think I’m a joke. They bring up the time I got caught in the catwalk all the time. It’s, like, their favorite story to tell at Christmas. This will be a good one, too. We can all sit around and laugh. That time you destroyed your uncle’s house!”

“But I destroyed it,” I said.

“You think it’ll make a difference who actually broke the window? It all happened on my watch,” he said. “Maybe they’re right. To think that I’m a joke.”

“Touch, you can’t possibly believe that.”

“It’s hard not to believe the story that people tell about you over and over and over.”

“She’s an orthodontist and he’s an accountant,” I said. “They wouldn’t even know a good joke if it hit them in the face. To them, a bologna sandwich is probably high comedy.”

“When we dated, you know what they said? That you were too good for me. That you’d come to your senses, eventually. You know that?”

“That’s fucked up,” I said. “You shouldn’t listen to them, Touchstone.”

“How can I not? They’re my family,” he said. He sighed heavily. “Sometimes I just feel less than. I don’t have Ros’s je ne sais quoi. I’m not good at sports, like my brothers. I’m not going to be a leading man, like Oliver Teller. I’m just me, and that doesn’t always feel like enough.”

“You are not less than,” I said as firmly as I could. “You are one of the only people in the world who make me feel normal. Look, you’ve got more talent in your little finger than all of them combined.”

“Celia,” he said finally. “I owe you an apology. I was a real shithead the other night.”

“Touch, you really don’t have to.…”

“Please let me finish. I just want to say that, like, I feel… like… really embarrassed. About how I treated you. And how I treated Oliver.”

“Evidently you were drinking cooking sherry,” I said.

“That explains my two-day hangover,” he said. “Anyway. I was seriously out of control. And I’m really sorry for that.”

“We both were,” I said. “I feel like—I mean, I’m part of the problem. The stuff you said earlier. About you being left out. I was wrong to abandon you like that.”

“The summer’s been quite a showing by both of us,” Touchstone said. “High drama between ex-spouses.”

It was our old joke, but now, after what Oliver had said to me—Do you really think he’s acting this way because of Power Jam?—it made me sad.