Cam’s attention was focused on rolling a joint, his narrow fingers deftly shaping the paper and filling it from a plastic bag just like the one Willa had hidden in a tampon box in the bathroom cupboard on the boat. His shoulder lifted in a half shrug. “Did you?”

“It was a pretty horrible day and I think Willa will be okay without me.” But the excuse seemed anemic, even to Taylor. “She’s probably glad I’m gone.”

“Well, there’s your answer,” Cam said.

“So why do I still feel like shit?”

He slid his tongue along the rolling paper before speaking, then, “Because it’s the wrong answer.”

Taylor slumped in her chair. In the distance, their golden retriever rustled around in the peony bushes, bothering a feral cat that was trying to sleep. If Buddy didn’t end up with a slash on his muzzle, he’d be lucky. Now that she was home, Taylor wanted to stay there, safe and dry. “I have to go back, don’t I?”

Campbell nodded. “Yep.”

“Will you take me?”

This morning, as he drove her back to Cleveland, Taylor practiced apologies in her head. But Willa doesn’t look overjoyed to see her, and the words stick in Taylor’s throat. She forces them out. “I shouldn’t have left. I’m sorry.”

“I’m done doing all the work,” Willa says.

“No. I know. I promise I’ll do more.”

“Fine.”

“I made a playlist,” Taylor says as she steps aboard Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, and Willa actually smiles at the olive branch.

“Cool.”

The air between them feels cleaner, but Taylor knows their relationship is like a house of cards. One strong gust and it will collapse again.

For the next few hours, they settle into a routine, taking turns steering the boat and making meals. Taylor reads the sex scenes from Outlander aloud, and Willa laughs at her terrible attempt at a Scottish accent. Taylor discovered the first book of the series in her mom’s nightstand drawer when they were in middle school, and a good portion of their sex education came from the sex scenes between Jamie and Claire—which, Taylor thinks now, might not have been the worst way to learn about sex. None of them had put the lessons into practice—at least as far as Taylor knows—but Finley was the one who talked most about having sex.

“The real tragedy,” she lamented, during one after-school visit, “is that I’m going to die a virgin.”

Willa laughed and bopped her with a pillow. “The bright side is that your chances of being canonized are that much better. Someday they’ll be saying prayers to Saint Finley, patron saint of virgins.”

Finley giggled. “Yeah, but if I had to choose between sainthood and having sex with Campbell . . .”