“Are you crying? Oh, crap. I didn’t mean to make you cry. What kind of crying is this? Sad crying? Happy crying? Relieved crying?”

“Why aren’t you judging me? You should be judging me and blocking my phone number.”

“I fear I haven’t been clear enough about how I feel about you. Do you need to read the webcomic again? I’ll wait.”

“The webcomic.”

“No! Crap! I didn’t mean to make you cry more! Forget I said anything about that.”

“Eliot, maybe I am going to need you to be really clear here.”

“Clear about which part?”

“You’re making it seem like you’re . . . going to be by my side. And if you’re not, I kind of need to know right now because . . .”

“I’m not going to let you do all of this alone, Jess. I mean, you get to decide how much you want to share with me. But I’m in. I’ll help with anything. Everything. I’ve learned how to be very organized in my life. We can take it step by step. We’ll make a plan for how to help Jack. Step one is probably some sort of substance abuse counselor? Or a therapist? I don’t know really. We’ll have to research it and figure out what steps to take.”

“Stop talking.”

“What?”

“Just . . . shhhhh.”

“Can I ask a question?”

“I . . . sure.”

“Is that the whole problem? The reason why you didn’t want me to know who you are? There’s nothing else?”

“It’s a pretty freaking big problem, Eliot.”

“Sure. Of course. I’m just wondering if there is anything else I need to know.”

“That’s the whole thing. Other than the fact that I was pretty sure I would scare the pretty-boy pants off of you once you found out who I was. But I figured that if you couldn’t handle it then you weren’t worth the heartache probably.”

“Hold on. Back up. Why would you scare my pretty-boy pants off? And, wait. Are you calling me a pretty-boy or saying that I wear pretty-boy pants?”

“Both? I’ve seen your work outfits. You wear, like, khakis. And suits and stuff.”

“Okay. Noted. We’ve already been over the fact that you’re cooler than I am. But why would you think you’d scare me?”

“The tats? The piercings? The combat boots? I guess I just assumed I wasn’t your usual style.”

“Hmm. Jess, any chance that you’ve looked at the comments for the most recent episode of the webcomic?”

“No. Not yet.”

“Well, most of them are about the new character.”

“The one I’m suing you over?”

“Yup. That one.”

“What do the comments say?”

“Mmm. I believe the most common word used is ‘snacc’ with two cs.”

“Um.”

“Yeah. There’s a lot of tongue-out emojis and people begging the character to step on them.”