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“My dad is cheating on my mom, and has been for years,” she said. It was getting easier to tell people each time, she realized. Or maybe it was just that this was Theo, the person she should have confided in long ago.

Theo stared at her for a second. “Really?” he asked, but he didn’t sound like he was questioning her truthfulness, more just buying himself time to process. “Fuck, you’re sure?”

Avery told him all of it: her mom crying, the photo, the other woman she saw him with, and the divorce lawyer. Theo listened, watching her face carefully, although for what, she couldn’t say. “And that’s why I just—God, Theo, I hate secrets.”

“Is now a good time to remind you that you came up with a plan for our Thanksgiving break that hinged entirely on us keeping secrets from other people or no?” he asked, and for a second her shoulders tensed. But then she saw the wry grin playing at the corners of his mouth.

A wild laugh escaped her. “Fuck you,” she said, and then he was laughing, and so was she, and she knew in that moment it would be okay. Maybe not perfect, and maybe he was over her romantically, but they could be friends, at least. And that would break her heart, but she could deal with that pain if it meant he was still in her life.

Theo smiled at her, his teeth white in the dim light of her room, and then sobered. “I am sorry, you know,” he said. “That really sucks.”

“It does,” she agreed.

“Wait, if he’s cheating on your mom, why did you have them go to Florida together? Do you think they’ll reconcile?”

“No. The opposite, actually.”

“Explain.”

Avery bit her lower lip. “They’ve been using me as a buffer for a long time. I waited until this morning, when they had everything packed up, to tell them I wasn’t going.”

“That couldn’t have gone over well.”

“They were pissed, I think because they were both dreading it. But joke’s on them: I was dreading it more than them combined. I told them the truth, that I knew about him cheating, and that I knew Mom knew, and I was done being the excuse they used to avoid talking about it.”

“That is cold, Aves. Cold as ice,” he said, with no small amount of admiration in his voice. “How long are they supposed to be there?”

“Until after New Year’s, but I’m betting one or both of them is back here by the twenty-sixth. Hopefully, with divorce papers in process.”

“You’re really sure splitting up is what’s best for them?”

Avery shrugged. “I think being forced to deal with each other for more than twenty-four hours without any other distractions or work should shake some things loose. I don’t care if they go through with the divorce so much as I want them to stop lying to each other.”

“And you think your mom is equally guilty?”

Avery shrugged. “Do you really want to stand up for her? She’s a real jerk to you most of the time.”

“Not denying that. Just, you know, maybe she has a reason.”

“Like?”

Theo looked down at his interlaced fingers, elbows still on his thighs. “Remember that time your dad had to drive me home from Tommy’s?”

Avery nodded. It had been the sort of night that needed far more logistics management than “go to Tommy’s and come home” should have required. She had gotten a ride to Grace’s with Harper, leaving Tommy and Theo to play games at Tommy’s house. But Theo couldn’t get home because his car decided that was the perfect time to crap out. Both his parents were working and couldn’t come get him, and Grace’s parents were stricter about curfew back then and wouldn’t let the girls leave to give Theo a ride home. But Avery had managed to get ahold of her dad on his way home from the hospital.

Theo waited for her nod to continue. “We were talking, and he said your mom once said that I reminded her of him, when they first met.”

Avery’s eyebrows hit her hairline, and she made a disgusted face. “Ew.”

Theo chuckled. “I said ‘Thanks,’ because I assumed it was a compliment, and then he went, ‘I don’t think she meant it that way.’”

“So you think my mom hates you because you remind her of her cheating husband when he was in college?”

“I’m just saying it’s possible. When my mom started dating Karl, she told me once that it was hard to date after Jake’s dad walked out because she thought her ability to pick good men had been totally broken. It might be something like that. Maybe your mom thinks you’re making the same mistake she did.”

Avery considered him seriously, turning his words over in her head. Theo didn’t really remind her much of her dad—her dad lived for attention, for one thing, while Theo never sought it out. And her dad was a charmer with everyone, while Theo could be stiff and awkward around strangers. But if she was being fair to her mother—which she didn’t really want to be at the moment—there was a magnetism to Theo that she could see him sharing with her dad. “You’re still not anything like my dad,” Avery argued. “And it’s not fair for her to be crappy to you because of stuff he did.”

“No argument there,” Theo agreed. He sat quietly for a minute.