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“I guess,” Theo said, with what he hoped was a nonchalant shrug.

Karl fussed with the collar, folding it several times to make sure it was creased exactly right. “Sometimes it’s hard. Caring about someone who is skittish.”

“You mean Mom was skittish?” Theo asked. He had been just a few years younger than Jake was now when Karl and Tiffany got married, so Theo hadn’t paid a ton of attention to how they got together. As far as he knew, one day his mom was dating Karl, and that was as much as he’d ever bothered to learn about their relationship.

“She had good reason to be,” Karl said. He flipped the shirt over to iron the other sleeve. “Neither your nor Jake’s dad was great, so she’d been pretty badly burned.”

Theo had only met Jake’s dad a handful of times, although every once in a while Jake would go down and spend a week with him and his biological grandmother in the Twin Cities over the summer. It was more of a presence than Theo’s dad had ever bothered with, but neither of them had what he’d call an involved father.

“So what’s your point?” Theo asked, maybe a little more sharply than he intended. He could tell Karl was getting at something specific, but he couldn’t tell what. And between balancing the lie with Avery, keeping some stuff from Avery he really, really didn’t want her to know, and hating himself for making things even more complicated by introducing the friends-with-benefits suggestion, he didn’t want Karl digging around too much.

But Karl, as usual, wasn’t perturbed. It was one of the reasons Theo had come around on him pretty quickly once he was sure Karl would stick around—he really didn’t mind when Theo was a little bit of a dick, and in fact seemed to understand why he needed to be sometimes.

“I know you know Avery really well, and better than I do, but there’s no other way to really say this. I’m an adult, and you’re only starting out. Sometimes we see things you kids might not, and Avery—I dunno, she strikes me as someone who works really hard to seem like she has it all together, whether or not that’s true. It must be hard on her, handling all that, you know? But my point is that sometimes when you’re—I don’t want to speak for you here, but I’ll just say—when you’re in love with someone who is maybe working through stuff, or has baggage, or just needs time to come around, you have to be patient. A lot of the time, what she’s dealing with has nothing to do with you. There’s no guarantee that will work, but it’s the right thing to do. And if she’s the right woman for you, being patient should be easy.”

Theo nodded, still not super-clear on what Karl was trying to tell him exactly but figuring he got the gist. If Avery was being skittish, just be patient. Which was, he supposed, probably accurate and easy enough in theory, but already the weekend was drawing to a close, and once they were back at their respective colleges they were calling it all off. And besides, he couldn’t make them into something real, even if he wanted to, because Avery didn’t want that. Hell, she’d only agreed to hook up with him on the condition that it not be anything, so really, he was screwed.

But also, he was starting to wonder if something really was up with Avery, since both his mom and his stepdad seemed to think so—or thought something should be up with her. He once again thought about the tension between her parents at Thanksgiving, and the way she snapped at him when he brought it up. Except Karl had just told him to leave it alone, not push it, so he would just have to let it be and hope that didn’t make things worse somehow.

Still, Theo appreciated Karl trying, as pointless as it was.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Avery

Avery looked at herself in the mirror hanging from her closet door once more. The dress looked nice on her, she knew that, but it didn’t stop her from smoothing out the wrinkles in the skirt and picking at the neckline, even though it lay exactly the way it was supposed to.

There was no earthly reason for her stomach to be in knots, except for maybe some minor dread about Theo and Cameron getting into it. She knew that being with Theo, even just pretending, was better than risking the alternative—a hookup with Cameron, which would be sexually fulfilling but emotionally counterproductive—but she also sort of dreaded a confrontation between them. Theo’s disdain for Cameron was palpable—especially after homecoming, when Avery had decided to forgive Cam’s momentary lapse—and Cameron had never much liked Theo either. If Cam had too much to drink and Theo was in one of his moods, the combination would be explosive.

“Avery, are you ready?” her mom called from downstairs. Avery took one last look in the mirror, tucked a lock of hair behind one ear, and squared her shoulders.

In the car, her dad drove and her mom tossed slightly nervous looks into the backseat until she cleared her throat. “So you said . . . Theo is coming?”

“Yeah, he’s meeting us there.”

“Cam’s mom said he was coming too,” Kelly said in what she clearly hoped was an innocuous tone.

“That’s what Cam said,” Avery said, hands fiddling with the hem of her dress. She forced herself to stop and looked out as the strip malls that lined the outer edge of town smeared past.

Her parents exchanged a look. Tonight, it seemed, the strain between them was going to be buried so deep that not even Avery could see it.

Theo was waiting by his car when they pulled into the lot, having clearly refused to use valet parking. He walked up as she and her parents disembarked under the deep portico, smiling broadly at her dad. “Dr. Nielson! And Dr. Nielson,” he said, slightly less warmly, to her mother.

The roots of Kelly’s dislike for Theo might be obscure, but Avery knew she disapproved of the following things: Theo’s refusal to join any school activities, his general “who gives a shit” attitude, and his status from a “broken home,” something she had never heard her mother say directly about Theo, but Kelly had talked very pityingly about other people in the town who got divorced “without ever thinking of the kids.” Avery knew if she asked, her mother would say she never judged anyone for their parents’ marital status, but she also knew her mother thought those kids were far more likely to screw up, and there was nothing Kelly hated more than a screwup. Avery’s dad seemed a lot less concerned about Theo’s social status, but he had also made his allegiance to the Finstads well known.

Her dad shook Theo’s hand, while her mom gave him a tight nod-and-smile, which was probably about as good as it was going to get with them. They all left their coats at the coat check—Theo hesitated only slightly before handing his over—and walked toward the main dining room, past a group of elderly men who had gotten waylaid by one another before reaching the door.

The main room of the country club was like walking into a time machine to when Bill Clinton was president and the Spice Girls were riding high, or at least what Avery assumed a time machine trip to the decade before she was born would feel like. The carpet was navy, with a dark green floral pattern. Chairs surrounding the tables looked more like they belonged in a law partner’s office, metal buttons studding the edges of the leather upholstery. Outside the windows lay the golf course, currently a barren expanse of snow and dark sky. The walls were wood paneled, the drapes dark and heavy, and in general everything gave off an air of wealth that was nearly thirty years out of date. But it was what passed for fancy up in Itasca, so that was where the rich denizens of the town met to celebrate themselves.

“Please tell me we can drink at this,” Theo muttered at her as soon as her parents drifted off to say hello to the hospital’s general counsel.

“Only if my parents don’t catch you. And you have to drive home, remember,” she muttered back.

“Doesn’t Cam get wasted at this every year?”

“Yes, but they don’t notice, which is the important part,” Avery replied.

Theo sighed heavily. “Fine,” he grumbled.