Dawn broke up with me last summer. I liked Dawn. She had the worst laugh I’d ever heard and could fix just about anything with her hands – was good with cars, computers, wiry things, which I found attractive. I wasn’t sure I loved her as I had nothing to compare my feelings to, but I knew I liked her well enough. I’d catch myself thinking of her while I was bored in class, kissing her, her in various positions, sometimes sexual and mostly not, sometimes quiet, comfortable intimacy – moving my hair from my face or picking lint from my shirt. Towards the conclusion of ‘us’ I realized that I liked to think of these things more than I liked for them to actually happen, but hated the thought of officially breaking it off. It might have been cowardice, or fear of retaliation, or the anticipated tedium of a serious, overly sentimental conversation – even still, my general enjoyment of her company was enough to make her words sting when she eventually ended whatever wilted thing there was between us with a seemingly premeditated speech in which she listed every single one of my flaws as I sat there, silent, listening.

I’m sorry, she’d said to open the tirade, I know you’re messed up from your sister … but …

I’m too distant, she says. I let no one in. I don’t trust her. I’m mean. I want to hurt others before they have a chance to hurt me. I’m too single-minded, too willing to manipulate to get what I want. Even when I’m being genuine, or what she thinks is me being genuine, she says, it seems like I’m playing a part, I’m reading lines, and I’m waiting for her to say hers back to me.

She might have been right. Maybe I could have loved her if I’d tried. Trusted her if I tried. Same thing.

I like Peyton. I don’t really feel like inviting anything more into the equation. Not here, not now, where the very nature of my being here is a lie, a secret in itself. How could anything meaningful be built on top? And I don’t like people looking at me like that, generally, anyway. But I think that might be how she’s looking at me and despite all of this and my reservations I can’t bring myself to put an end to it.

Peyton’s eyes flicker downward. She picks at a bobble on her sock. ‘Was wondering. Don’t want to make things too awkward and we’re, you know, stuck in the same broom closet together for three months, so. And Liam and I are just seeing each other,’ she says, and tosses the foam ball up to the miniature basketball hoop affixed to her wall. It misses and bounces back in her lap. ‘And I bore easily.’