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“Wow. That helps so much.”

“I’m being serious.”

“So am I.”

We cross the street. Corvin Hall rises up ahead with every third window lit yellow, and two guys are standing by the entrance. One of them heads inside as we get close. The other stays where he is, leaning against the brick.

Evan drags both hands down his face. “Can you give me five minutes without jumping on every word I say?”

I stop walking. “Jumping on every word?”

“That’s not—”

“No. Explain that one.”

He blows out a breath. “You do this thing where you decide what something means before I’ve even finished saying it.”

For weeks, maybe longer, I’ve done the exact opposite. I took every word he gave me at face value. I swallowed every small, sharp feeling that told me something was off, because he said nothing was, and I trusted him more than I trusted myself. And now he’s standing outside my dorm twenty minutes after I watched him kiss somebody else, telling me the problem is the way I listen.

My eyes burn. “You are unbelievable.”

“That’s not what I’m—”

“Then maybe start saying what you mean!”

It comes out loud enough to carry across the parking lot, and for half a second, all I can hear is my own voice coming back at me. I made it three blocks without crying. I kept walking because if I stopped, I was pretty sure I’d either scream or sob on the sidewalk, and apparently we’re going with screaming.

Heat crawls up my neck. There’s nobody out here except us and the guy against the brick, and of course he heard. His eyes come over once and then move away, and somehow that pisses me off more than if he’d stared.

“What?” I snap at him.

His eyes come back. “What?”

He doesn’t sound confused. He doesn’t sound like much of anything.

“Do you need something?”

“No.”

He looks at Evan for maybe a second, then back at me, and that’s it. No awkward smile, no pretending he wasn’t listening, no embarrassment on my behalf. He stands there like two people screaming outside the building is a mild inconvenience to his night, and I want to crawl out of my own skin, so I get mad at him instead.

“Kylie,” Evan says.

I don’t look at him. “Do you cheat on your girlfriends too?”

The stranger’s eyebrows lift, barely. “Do I what?”

“You heard me.”

“Unfortunately.”

Oh, fuck him.

“You look like the type,” I say. “Cheat on your girlfriend, lie about it, then stand there acting shocked when she loses her fucking mind.”

Evan says my name again, but I barely hear it. The stranger looks at Evan, then back at me, slowly.

“Do you know me?” the guy says.