He quaked and nodded. The drive-through kept running in cars and order-box static, oblivious to the frozen crowd inside. The girl with the headset was going to give herself whiplash trying to both do her job and not miss out on the show.

“I’m going to do you a favor,” the woman said, her fingers flying across the screen of Dylan’s phone. “And delete all of this.”

She handed the phone back to Dylan, tears now running in shining tracks over his furious blushing. He put his fingers around it, but she didn’t release her hold on the phone or his gaze. She did, though, take a small-arc step to the left, Dylan in tow, turning the conversation and angling their bodies, Carly realized with a startle, for her benefit. She could see them both in full profile now—Dylan’s wrecked humiliation and the woman, at once scarred and beautiful, in complete control.

“Fresh start,” she said to him.

He made a little choked sound in his throat and nodded helplessly again.

She pulled the phone like his tether and reeled Dylan in toward her. “You’re going to get a lot of shit for this, Dylan. For what’s happening here, right now.”

Carly felt the antennae of all the young people in the doughnut shop buzz to life, remembering their world.

The woman continued, “But it won’t last long. It’ll pass. I want you to get over it. I want you to be fine. I really do. But I want you to remember it. Every time you go through your new, nice—regular—pictures, remind yourself.”

Dylan bobbed his head, agreeing to anything to make it end, quivering in place, pinned there in all his wrongness.

“Don’t be a terrible person, Dylan. In the end, you never really get away with it.”

She let go of his phone first, then of his eyes.

Dylan melted into his group and they went straight for the door like a single creature. The room broke out in chatter.

The woman said to Carly, “Take my table. Catch your breath.” She gathered up her bag and her book, and moved her coffee to the far side to make space for Carly and Ada’s things.

“Thanks,” Carly said. “I mean, not for the table. I mean, yes, for the table. But for . . . you know. Thanks for helping.”

The girls arranged their treats in front of them, but the doughnut now looked gross to Carly. She was lost-in-the-desert thirsty, but the clear condensation on the outside of the cup was more appealing than the thought of the syrup-sweet drink inside.