Seeing me shiver, Nate hands me his sweatshirt. “Put this on.” I do as I’m told. Meanwhile, he’s looking at Billy. “Can I ask you a question?”

Billy’s face is flushed and dripping sweat. “If it’s about Diana, then no.”

“So, you’re never gonna tell us what happened?”

“I told you. We dated, we broke up, she got upset. We dated again, we broke up again, she got upset again. Then she got really upset. And now here we are.”

“With all due respect, Elmo,” I say. “She’s a little more than ‘upset.’”

“She’s fucking unhinged.” Nate flings his arms across our shoulders. “If you can’t tell us, who can you tell? We’re the Three Musketeers, remember? All for one, one for all.”

Nate came up with the Three Musketeers, but Lawrence had planted the seed, calling us the three stooges; the three little pigs; Huey, Dewey, and Louie; Charlie’s Angels. Like Nate, my happiest memories are from our summers at the beach. My brothers have July birthdays, and mine is in August. So our weekends were filled with parties, balloons, presents, and cake. Two years in a row, Lawrence hired a plane to spell out Happy Bday 3 M’s across the sky.

We’re almost home when Billy says, “I know you don’t understand my feelings for Diana. But we were happy. We had problems, but doesn’t every couple?”

“What kind of problems?” Nate asks.

“I don’t know, regular. She was a perfectionist. I’m . . . well, you know how I am. But we were crazy about each other. Have you ever heard me say that before?”

Their relationship, Billy reiterates, was fast and furious. He and Diana met in June at Sloan-Kettering, where they were summer interns. Diana’s family lives somewhere near Pittsburgh, but she was subletting a studio in the city, so they saw each other every day. It was a fantastic three months. Then when September came, and Billy felt crunched, Diana was surprised. “I told her we needed to slow down. She didn’t take it well, which I already told you. She called a lot. She cried nonstop. Then she started following me around.”

“Did it bother you?” I ask, thinking of Marcus. At times, I carried on like this, calling and texting him nonstop.

Billy shrugs. “I love her.”

“Not an answer, Billy boy,” Nate says gently.

“Yeah, okay. It did bother me. But we got back together, and it was fine. Then December rolled around. I told her I had to focus. She said she understood. But when I couldn’t see her, she got angry.”

“You mean she went nuts,” I say. “Again.”