She wasn’t certain how she felt, knowing her man had been turning tricks. She told herself she should be bothered by it, should be worried about STDs and the cops, should be consumed with fear at the knowledge that her man might not be as straight as she’d always assumed, but in all honesty she felt nothing but gratitude. He’d made her more money; it might be the most selfless thing (perhaps the only selfless thing) he’d ever done for her. Escorting, to Kimbra’s mind, was crafty, dangerous, stupid and useful: did any four words better summarize the love of her life?

She wondered how it had started, wondered how her man had first discovered he could stomach whatever it was he had done for this money. Even if he was some kind of queer (difficult as that was for her to imagine), wouldn’t it take a special sort of damage for a boy like KT to perform the things promised in that ad she’d sent to Joel Whitley? She couldn’t imagine it was easy on the body or the brain. Had he gotten practice, she wondered, somewhere close to home?

Which led her to another question: if the escorting ad she’d seen was KT’s (again, she would know that dick anywhere), why had KT put Dylan’s face on his own listing? It smacked of some sort of revenge, but what could Dylan have done to deserve it? She wondered if that vengeance had anything to do with the fact KT had been snorting up half of his product all summer. Because thieving mothers or not, there should have been much more money in this can than twelve grand.

All week long, Kimbra had thought she wanted to know what secrets were eating her poor beautiful boyfriend so badly he’d started using (again). She’d been certain that if she knew, she might be able to help him, like always. She’d thought she could find a solution to it the way she had found the paint can and the half brother and every other answer she’d come up with when KT had come running to her, crying because the world was so hard.

It was confounding, the loathsome gravity at work in her heart. Kimbra knew that she was clever, reasonable, cautious, and yet against this one footballer with the little freckle on his upper lip, his careful hands, the glimpses she sometimes caught of the better, gentler boy who lived inside him, none of Kimbra’s caution did her a bit of good. Look at them, the girl with the bankrupt family and the eighteen-year-old footballer with the drug habit and a sideline servicing men for money. The town’s tabloid sweethearts, Dylan Whitley and Bethany Tanner, seen through a busted filter. With some mixture of relief and resignation, Kimbra had lately begun to tell herself that she and KT were made for each other. A part of her—a grotesque, powerful part—would always be the plain girl who had been stunned two years ago when that handsome, funny, dangerous boy had first privileged her with his attention.