As Shaw guided the Mercedes onto I-44, the city dropped below him like a field of amber fireflies. He wasn’t going to tell North about his feelings. North was married; nothing good would come of telling him. But Shaw knew that the loop inside his brain wasn’t going to let up. If he tried to go home, if he took the stairs behind the kitchen up into the darkness, if he lay in bed, it wouldn’t matter what kind of ocean sounds he played in the background, nor how much lavender essential oil he put in the diffuser, nor how much melatonin he swallowed, he’d never get to sleep. He’d keep going back to the knife, the cartwheel, the boot. Back to the crater that had been blown into him. He just needed to see North. Talk to him. Process what had happened tonight.

He’s sweet, but a little too soy boy for me.

Shaw took the Elm exit and followed it north, into Webster Groves. The city, one of the innermost suburbs, had huge, old trees and huge, old houses, and it had Webster University, and it had a lot of money. If you weren’t going to live in the city—and Shaw had never really understood why someone wouldn’t—then Webster Groves was the next best thing. And of course, Tucker refused to live in the city. Tucker had to have a big house. A really big house. A really expensive big house. In Webster Groves.

The house sat back on the lot, like so many of the houses in Webster, and an old walnut tree and a much smaller Japanese maple fronted the road; a mixture of elm and maple dotted the rest of the grounds. In April, with most trees still in bud, it was easy to see straight back to the house. The lights were on.

Shaw parked on the street, and he hoofed it up the long drive, shivering as the cold humidity of the April night soaked into him. The crisp sound of his footfalls shook him out of the reverie he had experienced in the car, and now this all seemed foolish. North was exhausted. He was hurt. He probably just wanted Tucker to take care of him, probably just wanted to crawl into bed and sleep, and Shaw was being a baby.

For a moment, Shaw hesitated. Then he kept going. Be true to yourself, that’s what Dr. Farr always said. Be honest about what you need. And what Shaw needed, what he’d needed since freshman year, was North McKinney. But since that wasn’t going to happen, the other thing he needed was a friend to talk to. And North might pull a face about it, and he might bitch about it, but at the end—in Shaw’s mind, he was back on the street corner outside Pigs and Pups, North’s arms around him, North’s voice like gravel as he said, That was fucked up in there—North would listen, and North would talk, and after fifteen minutes or an hour, Shaw could go home and sleep.