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palm.
    “God help me, you’re fucking right.”
    “I know I am.”
    He chuckled again. “Okay. In honor of this weird and awful night, I hereby swear”—he did Scout’s Honor with his right hand—“that I, Jonathan Brast, will stop dating bimbos. And that I will try to find a good one.”
    “Witnessed,” I said somberly, “by me, Caroline Ha—” My throat locked. I couldn’t bear to form the word. My name. Adam’s name.
    “Shit,” I whimpered.
    And then Jonathan was holding me, rocking me back and forth as tears spread messily over my cheeks. The ache was eating me alive, and all I wanted to do was sink into the oblivion of sleep so I wouldn’t have to feel it anymore. But I knew sleep would only get me through until tomorrow morning. As soon as I opened my eyes, the pain would be there waiting for me.
    This was only the beginning.

3
    •
My heart is full of you, none other than you in my thoughts, yet when I seek to say something to you not for the world, words fail me.
    —Emily Dickinson to Susan Gilbert, June 11, 1852
    At 6:06 A.M. two days later, I was facedown in Jonathan’s pillow, denying the existence of alarm clocks and sunlight, when I heard him set a mug down on the tiny night table next to my head.
    “Come on, Care. We’ve gotta get a move on.”
    The words bounced slowly around my skull. I pushed up on one elbow and glared at him. “Get a move on where? And why now?”
    “I’m driving you back to Williamstown. And then I have to catch the ten A.M. bus back to the city so I can be at work by four.”
    I sank my head back into the pillow and peered at him through my one exposed eye. “Do I really have to go home?”
    His smile was kind, and a little sad. “You do, darlin’. It’s been fun having you here, but you’re not going to figure things out binge watching
Battlestar Galactica
on my laptop.”
    “It’s been pretty great to forget I had anything to figure out,” I said.
    “I know. But I think you’ll feel better once you get home. Drink your tea, honey, and let’s get out of here.”
    I sat up and drank, studying Jonathan over the edge of the mug. Why the hell, why the
ever-loving hell,
couldn’t I have done what every single friend of ours in college had been vocally confident that I would do, and end my long-distance relationship with Adam so I could date Jonathan? Though no one believed me, I’d always been too in love with Adam to suffer any real twinges of attraction to Jonathan; but it hadn’t escaped my notice that he was a knockout. Penetrating blue eyes and collarbone-length rusty-red hair that just begged you to run your hands through it. Fair skin so burnished with freckles it went almost golden. A jawline you could crack an egg on, currently adorned by a trim beard that—as fun as it was to tease him for being a hipster—I had to admit really worked for him. And I’d seen him on enough beach trips to know he had a lot to offer in the shirtless department, if you were into that sort of thing (especially if you liked your boys inked). He had taken it as a personal challenge to be the one Southern chef in America who didn’t let his pork belly roots get the better of him. And Jonathan would never,
ever
cheat.
    Then again, two days ago I would have bet all the blood in my body that Adam wouldn’t, either.
    •
    Usually, trips back to Massachusetts with Adam were our time to talk over the events of the weekend, molding the forms of the stories we’d collected and then baking them into fixed and hardened shapes that we’d store in our collection forever. That time I let Jonathan persuade me to eat an escargot and it took me four minutes to swallow it; the time Ruby broke the thong on her designer flip-flop and she just tucked it into her purse and walked barefoot instead of going back to her apartment.
    But today, it was Jonathan driving while Adam stayed behind in the city. I had his letter tucked into the pocket of my overnight bag, still unread. It lurked