I glare resentfully at the way the two hold hands, picture throwing a knife at her back, and that’s when the letters string together to form something with meaning.

Penn State Field Hockey Team.

Field Hockey.

Hockey.

Eli.

As far as free associations go, it’s pretty weak—my brother used to play the ice variety of the sport—but who cares? It reminds me that I’m not completely alone on this shitty little rock of a planet. The last of the daylight may be slipping away, but someone exists who is related to me by blood. Our shared genes might compel him to pick up the phone. Or even just the fact that I’m calling him for the first time since I was back in Texas for the summer holidays. Last year.

Conversations with my brother—not my most beloved pastime. But beggars can’t choose shit, and I haven’t given myself much of an alternative, in the four years since I moved to Scotland. I barely kept in touch with my Austin friends—from high school, from figure skating, from those grief groups I was forced to attend once every two weeks. New country, I thought, determined to leave behind the bullshit of my teenage years. New social circle that will not see me as a bereaved, defective human. It made so much sense, especially after I met Rose on the first day of S1.

“Excuse me,” she asked after tapping my back. “How comfortable are you with me touching your arse?”

I glanced behind me. Took in a beautiful, upturned nose and bottle green eyes. “Not very.”

“You’ll want to get over any reservations in the next few seconds, then.”

“Why?”

“Because you clearly sat in pigeon poo, and the back of your jeans looks like you shat yourself.”

I tried to look over my shoulder. Saw nothing.

“Not gonna work, not by yourself,” she said sympathetically, before smiling and adding, “Someone will have to cop a feel. It might as well be me.”

Rose was right: I needed her in my life for many reasons, most of which were not even tangentially related to dry cleaning. She was irreverent, and kind. Always honest and never judgmental. I adored her from the start, and then I adored her even more when she introduced me to Georgia, her wild, party-minded cousin. I’d always wanted to be thirty-three percent of a trio, and boy, did they deliver. For the past four years, they were there through it all: Exams, navigating a new country, figuring out what the hell I wanted to do with my life. The small tragedies and the overwhelming joys of everyday life.

Except, Rose and Georgia are currently unavailable to me. They, unfortunately, are busy taking each other’s side. As well as Alfie’s—the guy who dumped me exactly six days ago, after one and a half years together.

“It’s not working,” he told me with a pained wince. “Sorry, Maya. It’s just not.” I’d been wondering why he was so light on the details, and…