After The Tar Heel was put to bed he went for a late supper with Lily. She drove him to an all-night breakfast diner, a different place than the one he remembered with Ben; her car was a battered old Volvo, rusted and creaking, but she kept it neat as a pin, not one stray piece of paper, and it smelled like flowers inside, a hint of rose and honeysuckle. When he asked, she said, “Oh, I can’t tell you my scent secrets. We’re not that close.” Then she laughed, full throated, delighted with herself. “It’s such a disaster of a car. I had to do something.”

“At least it runs.”

“I suppose. I’m not sure how much longer it will, though. I think it’s the rust that holds it together.”

They’d been friends since freshman year, and they were seniors now. That counted as a long time, in college. In the restaurant, after they ordered, he took a deep breath and told her about the meeting he had attended, simply, without allowing himself to hesitate. She sat there for a minute. She had been telling him to do something like this for a while. But she appeared more perturbed than he had expected. He busied himself with unrolling his silverware, arranging it on the napkin, studying the other people in the restaurant. “So have you heard from your football player? Are you giving up on him?” She referred to him in that way, “your football player,” with scorn, whenever he came up.

“No, I haven’t heard anything.”

They sat quiet. He tried to eat. The eggs were getting cold.

She lifted her fork, stirred hot sauce into her eggs. Her appetite appeared better than his. She was thinking hard, he could see it. “You said he’s back.”

“Yes. He’s still playing for the football team.”

“Why are you so sullen? I’m just trying to talk to you.”

“You remember how you acted when I came out.”

“How many times do I have to apologize for that? You do know I liked you myself, don’t you?” She flushed, disconcerted. “I didn’t mean to sound the way I did.”

He had not known. He should have. But that didn’t make the memory any different. And the memory didn’t change the fact that she was his friend. “I told you about Ben, not so you could interrogate me about him. I wanted to be honest. I know what you think of it.”

“How do you know what I think?”

“You make it obvious.”

“Ronny, it wasn’t pretend. That was what I was worried about, that you were chasing something that wasn’t real. But it was real. Something happened with him. You said that yourself.”

They let the subject go. So easy to watch the thoughts flicker over her; feeling flowed right through. She had something more to say but she willing to wait, so there was other conversation. They talked about Doris Betts, who taught writing on campus. Each had taken a class with her. Lily wanted to talk about a book of hers she had read, Beasts of the Southern Wild, an important short story collection, she said. She enjoyed making statements like that, and Ronny enjoyed hearing them; it was a measure of their adulthood, an assertion of a worthwhile opinion. Mrs. Betts was a beautiful writer, Ronny said. She was also a beautiful woman with sparrow eyes and long dark hair; it always came down to beauty. They discussed their friends, the coolness of Lily’s sister, the stuffiness of Rushmore, the pretentiousness of Sfarlien, the beauty—there it was again—of Roxanne. Her thighs, trained as a ballet dancer, like so many girls. Who had she slept with? Random talk. But Lily moved toward her subject in a meticulous way. Setting down her coffee cup just so.