“You look so good in sleeves . . .”

“I’m not accommodating you at the gym, Summer. I’m allowed to look like a meathead there.”

Michelle thought Benji was weird, and she didn’t get any of his jokes. But she liked him okay. She agreed that he should stop wearing tank tops.

Benji tried to teach Summer how to lift weights. Her heart wasn’t in it. But it was fun hanging out with him.

The tracks on Winter Songs for Summer all felt like clean, yellow light.

Like stepping out into the cold after you’d been working out. Or like—that feeling you get when you recognize a pattern.

There were lots of women singing in harmony. Lots of tinkly pianos. Cat Stevens made another appearance. And Judy Collins. And there was a song Summer had never heard by Pearl Jam. (She thought she’d heard every song by Pearl Jam.)

Every single song made Summer smile.

Well, almost every single song—the last track was “Silent All These Years.” That one made her cry. She’d thought she didn’t have any more tears left for that song, but it had something to do with the other songs on the CD . . . The journey of them. The momentum. Context mattered.

“Let me explain how you’re wrong,” Benji said.

They were walking home from the rec center. Michelle had left a while ago, but Summer had stayed to entertain Benji while he lifted.

It was February and frigid, so Benji was wearing a big down coat over his tank top. Summer wondered if he’d gone to the coat store, and they’d brought out the only three coats that might fit him.

“Go for it,” Summer said. “Wrong about what?”

“Love,” he said.

“Oh. Right.” Summer hadn’t thought about love lately. Though she still thought about Charlie. Everything still reminded her of him—they’d spent too much time together in all of Summer’s usual places for her to shake him off completely. “Love,” she said.

“You weren’t wrong about being in love,” Benji asserted.

“Yes, I was.”

“No, listen—” He held up both hands. “Imagine, you move into Schramm Hall.”

“I’m with you so far.”

“And you go to the cafeteria for dinner.”

“Right.”

“And you sit on the north side, because why wouldn’t you? The line is shorter.”

“Okay.”

“And you’re eighteen, so you see the ice cream machine, and you’re like, ‘Holy fuck, there’s a soft-serve machine?! I’m gonna eat ice cream with every meal!’ ”

“They only turn it on at dinner.”

“You’re new, you don’t know that.”

“Okay,” she said.

“And so you have ice cream every night, and you’re happy with it.”

“Only because I don’t know about the south side.”

Benji whirled on her and grabbed the edge of her coat. “Only because you don’t know about the south side!”

He kept hold of her coat.