IFEOMA: You should practice some self-care. And do not look at Karan’s Instagram. He hasn’t updated it anyway, but it’ll just make you feel shitty to see old pics.

NATASHA: I’ll stay away. Promise.

“You’re going to be great. You’ve always been the funniest person in the room,” Anuj says as Natasha puts her phone facedown. Anuj has been wearing the same outfit since he got into Cornell’s architecture program: a red Cornell sweatshirt and basketball shorts.

The knot of stress behind Natasha’s sternum starts to loosen. Anuj always believes in her, and now, more than ever, she needs that: someone who sees her better than how she sees herself.

“Why not at least tell Suhani and Zack?” Anuj says.

Natasha frowns. “Why do you keep pushing me?”

“Because it might be nice?” Anuj fiddles with a stack of old CDs: TLC, Spice Girls, Backstreet Boys. When they were younger and had graduated from building forts out of blankets and pillows, she and Anuj would make teetering, Jenga-like towers out of Suhani’s CDs.

“Nice? Nice?! You’ve got to be kidding me. It would suck. This is hard enough without any of them knowing about it. You know they’d find a way to make me feel even shittier about myself, especially after everything that happened with Karan. They think I’m the worst.”

And sometimes I believe them, she thinks. She hates the way her self-esteem seems to shift every day, sometimes every hour. On some days she’s ready to take on her new life, and on others she wakes up drenched in sweat, convinced she’s fucked up yet another thing.

“Jeez, fine, I get it.” Anuj shakes his head. He’s grown his hair out past his ears so it’s curling at the ends.

Natasha sighs. Why did she have to snap and go on a rant like that? Anuj was only asking.

She needs to get a grip. But without her job, she no longer has insurance. Her last therapy appointment was two weeks ago. The serotonin is probably bouncing around in her brain like Pop Rocks candy.

“What if I made a mistake? With the whole Karan situation?” Natasha asks.

Anuj puts the CDs down. “Is that what you really think?”

“I don’t know. It’s just so weird not even talking to him.” Natasha sometimes feels as though she’s lost a limb. And it isn’t just the Karan of today she’s had to let go of. It’s the two-year-old Karan, who shared his sliced grapes with her, and then twenty-year-old Karan, who spooned with her on a twin bed in her dorm. Breaking up with someone means leaving all of their selves.