I graduate from Spence and enroll in Columbia, across town and up a couple dozen blocks. I move into my own apartment on Riverside Drive, ten minutes from the Valmont by cab. Right by the park, our special bench. Lawrence visits frequently. I’m seventeen then eighteen, finally an adult. I’ve never known such freedom. Out of Eleanor’s house, away from her disapproving eye, I spend entire mornings without clothes. I stand in my small galley kitchen, in broad daylight, my windows wide open. My body will never be this firm again. I flash the Upper West Side. No one tells me what to wear, when to eat, who to fuck. Our sex is consuming, satisfying; unobserved and finally, truly alone. Lawrence can’t keep his hands off me. “I can’t stop,” he tells me. Neither of us can.

These afternoons aren’t enough. We both want more. Someday, Lawrence promises, we’ll have a kitchen, his-and-her cars, our own celebration room. “Call me ‘Sweetheart,’” he begs when he’s wrapped in my arms. “Say I’m your sweetheart.”

But someday is too far away. “Now,” I say.

“When you graduate,” he reminds me. He’ll tell Eleanor it’s over; he doesn’t love her anymore. He loves me. “You’re the Forever Girl. My one and only.”

Two years pass. I study stupid shit.

Two more years pass. I study more stupid shit. Sometimes I care, mostly I’m waiting.

Finally, I graduate. For me, there are champagne toasts. Two strands of Mikimoto pure white South Sea pearls. Diamond stud earrings. Fifteen thousand shares of Class A stock. A round-trip ticket to Morocco. For Lawrence + Cassie, there are bickering and tears, arguments and ultimatums. Opposites coexist. It’s the best time of my life and the very, very worst.

Lawrence + Cassie devolves. We are as fraught and miserable as spouses in a thirty-year marriage. Fights are never resolved; resentment can’t be assuaged. We are always seething, always tense. I make a pronouncement. “I’m going to grad school; I found a program. It’s at Yale. Have you ever seen Yale? It’s gorgeous.”

“You went to see it?” He can’t believe it. “When was this?”

“When you were with your wife.”

“What about me? What about us?”

“I knew you’d do this, Lawrence. You’re so fucking weak.” I’m frantic with rage and scared half to death, but I’m doing it. I’m going.

There is begging, and promises are made. “Wait a little longer,” he tells me.

“I’m done waiting, Lawrence.” Far off in the distance, Rachel is humming, singing a sad lament about beautiful things. In this moment, I realize she’s speaking to me. I walked away, Cassie, she is saying. But I wasn’t leaving you; I needed to do it for me.

I can do it, too, I tell myself. I have to do it.