I smile and wait for him to tell me why he’s here.

‘I had a fight with my dad,’ he says, in a tone that he’s trying to make sound normal, a bit cheerful even, a joke. But his voice trembles the tiniest, tiniest bit at the end.

‘Come in,’ I say.

He follows me in.

‘Is this okay? That I came here?’

‘Yes. We’re friends.’

‘I know you said that but—’

‘We’re friends Jesse,’ I say firmly.

‘Where’s Lauren?’

‘Out.’

‘What about your mum and nanna?’

‘Asleep.’

Jesse follows me into the lounge room, and sits next to me on the couch.

‘Hello, buddy,’ he says, leaning down to pat Minty. She yowls.

‘That’s Minty. She’s technically Nanna’s cat, but she kind of owns all of us a bit.’

‘Nice to meet you, Minty. I’m Jesse.’ He touches the top of her paw with his finger, like a little cat version of a handshake.

‘Do you want to talk about the fight?’ I say.

‘What are you doing?’ Jesse says, ignoring my question.

‘Trying to write a new story for my class. My teacher said the one I submitted wasn’t good enough.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I’m a bad writer who handed in a pile of shit and I shouldn’t even be taking the class.’

‘She really said that?’ he says.

‘I’m paraphrasing the general vibe of her email,’ I say, pulling my hair out of its messy bun and then changing my mind and twisting it back up. I shrug out of the ugly dressing-gown and try to subtly discard it over the side of the couch.

‘Can I read it? The story she didn’t like?’

‘No,’ I say. I almost laugh at the absurdity of the request. I was just considering dramatically deleting the file off my computer altogether, except I already backed it up to the cloud and also an external hard drive and emailed myself a copy, so it would be a fairly meaningless act.

‘Come on. I need a distraction,’ he says, and his cajoling face, his glasses—it all weakens my resolve a little.

‘No,’ I say, but with a bit less conviction.

‘Please, Brooke.’ He smiles at me.

As the story goes in my family, Mum chose Lauren’s name, and Dad chose mine, and I always hated that, because it feels like I am tied to Dad in some symbolic way I don’t want. I already have his surname, and having him linked to my first name as well feels too much. Maybe because of this, the word Brooke has always sounded rough and unpleasant to me, a one-syllable punch of a word that lands like a thud. Brooke. But the way Jesse just said it, he made it sound soft and lyrical, he made it like it belonged to no one but me.