We ended up hanging out, watching game shows, drinking until we both had a good buzz on. He made me promise to tell Betsy he was fine. I agreed, even though I knew I wouldn’t lie to Bets. When I got back, I told her he’d been a complete wreck. I think it was a relief for her to hear that. It meant that he still loved her, too. She left Georgia State a couple of months later, mid–second semester, instead of getting every penny’s worth of adventure by waiting to officially fail out.

Her time at college had been like an acting job, I thought when it was over and she was packing cheerfully for home. Maybe college was that way for a lot of people. A chance to try on different selves. I’d done my experimenting with fresh identities from the safety of a stage, but Bets had had to do it in real time. For months I’d watched her try on a hundred girls, one after another, like slip dresses. And yes, some of those girls were selfish or rash or thoughtless. Pleasure seekers. Rule breakers. They had also been her best performances; she had a spark and a sizzle in life that didn’t translate to the stage.

In the end she remembered herself. I could almost see her stepping away from a pile of discarded costumes. She hugged me tight good-bye, and it was my old Betsy in my arms. Herself, but grown. Done playing. Ready for something real.

But on that long laundry weekend when she sent me to check on Marshall, he didn’t know that within three months he’d have her back. He was so sad that I kept patting him, squeezing his hand, leaning into his shoulder as we watched TV.

When the wine coolers were gone, I got up and said I needed to get home. He thanked me for coming, then got up, too, and pulled me into a real hug. It was strange to feel his tall, muscular body shaking, so weak. I wondered if he was actually crying. I’d grown up in the rural South with no father, no brothers. I’d never seen a grown-up male person cry. I pulled back far enough to see his eyes, and yes, they were wet. I was moved by this, and our faces were so close that I could smell wine coolers on his breath, sweet and tangy. I think we leaned in at the same time.

It wasn’t much of a kiss. Lip on lip, our mouths only slightly open. Our tongues brushed, just barely, but I learned the blackberry taste of him.

Then we jerked apart.

“Too much to drink,” he said, and shook himself like a bear. “You can’t drive home just yet. You’ll kill a deer or a tree or a pedestrian.”