I could have done without the exclamation points and the emoji. There’s no way this is going to end well, but when have I ever done anything that ended well?

See you then. Don’t be late.

—

The doorbell rings at eight o’clock sharp as I’m pulling on my jeans. I haven’t left my room for more than ten minutes today. I spent most of the afternoon texting Lucy, telling her about my date…or nondate…or whatever the fuck it is. She, predictably, was ecstatic. She was all like I am taking credit for all of this. You had better name your firstborn after me. To which I responded: You need serious professional help. I mean, honestly.

I’m walking out of my bedroom to answer the front door, but my mom gets there first. Dammit dammit dammit. I didn’t think she was home.

I rush down the stairs and find her standing in the hallway, talking to Zach. It’s weirdly déjà-vu-esque, seeing the two of them there chatting.

When she hears me behind her, she turns and raises her eyebrows, a curious expression on her face. I know what she’s thinking. No one but Lucy has visited me in almost a year. A hole opens up deep in the pit of my stomach. This is a bad idea.

Before everything, before last year, this would have gone differently. Jordan would have been here, smirking at my nervousness. We would have spent the hour before Zach arrived gossiping about him—going through his social media and discussing every picture in detail. My mom would have been downstairs, making dinner, drinking a glass of wine, maybe listening to some music. That’s how it was when Miles entered the picture, at first. But once we’d been dating for a few months, Jordan started to hate Miles, hate who I became when I was around him, hate that I drank so much and lost myself. It got to the point that every time Miles was set to arrive, Jordan would lock himself in his room after giving me yet another sad look. He saw what was happening to me before I did. I didn’t want to see that Miles wasn’t good for me—that we weren’t good together—because for the first time, I had my own life, my own friends, my own space to breathe. So I ignored it, and ignored Jordan’s looks and Lucy’s comments and my own goddamn brain. Ignored it all, until it was too late.