“I don’t think I was a loser either, honestly,” she said, “but when you’re surrounded by people who have so much more than you do, you don’t know that—at least at twenty-two, you don’t. So him rejecting me just felt like this final, official confirmation that I was never really part of their group, that my life was just me kind of lying to myself, if that makes sense? It just completely decimated my self-confidence. So hating him was my way of powering through that, making it all about him and what he did to me instead of what it actually was, which was me needing to get some self-confidence.”

“So you messing with his job was kind of paying him back, then?”

“It felt like it. But then it happened, and I just felt awful.”

“But then you still hooked up?”

The question took her by surprise, but it made sense. To anyone outside of their very specific dynamic, the particulars probably seemed insane.

“Well, yeah. I mean, there’s definitely, like, this core attraction there, there always has been. But I know that me going after him like that ten years after college just solidified it in his mind: I’m someone he can sleep with, but not someone he could marry.”

“We’ve jumped to marriage?”

Alex hadn’t even realized she’d said the word.

“I mean, you know. Date.”

“Right.” Louisa raised that brow again, taking a long sip of her ice water. “Unsolicited advice?”

“Please.”

“I didn’t always know Dimitri was my person. We met when I was twenty-one, and I don’t think there was a single day that year I wasn’t under the influence of at least one substance.”

“Maybe two.”

“Maybe two!” Louisa said, laughing her wonderful, hearty laugh. “I always thought: no, the guy you meet in your crazy phase is not The Guy. He can’t be, right?”

“Right.”

“And I think it’s the same for your weird loser college phase—no offense. You still think of yourself as that person when you’re with him, because he takes you back to that place. You probably did that thing with his work because of it. Whatever you did.”

“Probably, yeah, you’re right.”