Cruel Winter with You (Under the Mistletoe collection)
Cruel Winter with You: Chapter 2

The problem is, I do.

Know Marc, that is.

I know him very well since I first met him on the day he was born, in our hometown hospital, which smelled like cough syrup and the municipal pool. In return, he became the shining star of my earliest memory, which included Dad sitting me on a large plush chair and Mrs. Compton handing me a shapeless bundle with the warning, “Be careful, Jamie. Make sure you hold the head—yes, exactly like that.” I was two and a half. Tabitha, who was about six months older than me, had just celebrated her third birthday with a splash-pad party.

Tabitha wasn’t there, though. She was at home with her grandparents, due to what her mom referred to as “a string of attention-seeking tantrums” but what Tabitha would later reframe as “conscientious objection to the imposition of an unnecessary expansion effort.” She had been informed that a new family member would be forthcoming, and was not inclined to share resources that her young mind perceived as finite, such as toys, Frosted Flakes, and parental love.

That’s how I ended up meeting her new sibling before she did, and I was eager to report back that, competition-wise, she had nothing to fear. The red creature squirming in my arms had a scrunched-up face, wrinkly nose, pimply cheeks, folded ears, old-man hair, and was covered in dried crusts. It reminded me of the sugar cookies Dad would bake over the holidays, in particular the ones that didn’t come out of the oven quite right. Unfortunate looking, he’d call them.

The description fit well. The thing in my lap clearly did not have a single ounce of fortune.

“What’s her name?” I asked Mrs. Compton.

“His,” Dad corrected me. “He’s a boy, honey.”

Suddenly, everything made sense. “That’s why he’s so ugly.”

The adults burst into laughter—very mean spirited, I thought, given that the poor baby was already dealing with the adverse condition of not being a girl. I tuned them out until Mr. Compton asked me, “Jamie, do you know what we named him?”

I shook my head.

“Marc. Marc Evan Compton.”

And maybe the baby already recognized his own name, because in that precise moment, he opened his gray eyes and, after a couple of clumsy attempts, gripped my index finger. Hi, his unwavering stare seemed to say.

And: Stay.

And maybe even: I like you.

He was small, but strong. And at once, an overwhelming sense of love and protectiveness swept over me. It’s okay, I swore silently to Marc. I’ll be your friend. I’ll get Tabitha to be your friend, too. And I will love you. Even if you’re the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen.

It was a heartfelt, sincere promise. One that I broke a million times over in the next few years. Because, in a tragic turn of events, Marc Evan Compton turned out to be the absolute worst.

For several highly gullible years, I was a Marc apologist.

“I’m sure he didn’t mean to do that,” I’d tell a seething Tabitha every morning as we walked to school. “Switch out your vitamin gummies with laxatives, that is.”

Or use your favorite shirt to line the hamster’s cage.

Stab you in the eye with a plastic fork.

Lock you in the linen closet.

Convince all the neighborhood kids to call you Dumbitha.

Train the dog to behead your favorite Barbie.

Puke up three servings of mac and cheese right in your lap.

Sneak insects inside your bed.

I made up excuses because with me, Marc was never a terror. Whatever instinctive love I’d felt toward him on the day he was born, it was reciprocated. Dad and Mr. Compton had been best friends since high school, and our families were constantly in each other’s proximity. Mom had left us right after I was born, and Dad, with his very demanding job, appreciated all the childcare the Comptons could offer. Tabitha and I were, of course, inseparable. But I had a special bond with Marc, too.

“I wish you lived with us,” he would tell me sweetly when I’d leave Tabitha’s room after a weekend sleepover.

And: “You’re my favorite person in the whole world.”

And: “When we grow up, I want us to get married.”

No such thing would happen. I already had a husband picked out: Alan Crawford, an older guy from down the street (or, should that fail, Lance Bass from NSYNC). In my eyes, Marc was a little boy. Nevertheless, I found him adorable. I taught him the alphabet and how to tie his shoelaces. In return, he yelled at a kid who shoved me at the playground, and made me valentines every year.

“You’re supposed to be my best friend,” Tabitha reminded me about once a week. “I knew that noobnugget would steal half of everything. I just didn’t think you’d be included.”

But I loved them both. And for years, even as the relationship between Tabitha and Marc began involving allergenic substances slipped into each other’s lunches, sharp pushpins, and constant threats of mutual destruction, I tried not to take sides. “You don’t have to choose between them, honey,” Dad would say. “This is just typical sibling rivalry. A phase they’ll grow out of. Just sit it out.” And I did—until we were twelve, Marc was nine, and the egg incident happened.

To this day, Marc maintains it wasn’t on purpose. That he didn’t know our “unhinged school would engage in as deranged an activity as pretending that an egg is a baby and having students carry it around for a week without cracking it.” But not only did our unhinged school engage in as deranged an activity, it also scored us on it. A whole 30 percent of our final Family Sciences grade depended on that damn egg.

Which is why, when I entered the Comptons’ kitchen and found Marc eating it—fried, on toast, tomatoes on the side—I didn’t stop Tabitha from retaliating. I observed in silence as she ran after him. Said nothing as she tackled her brother, even though he was already taller than both of us. Leaned back against the door and crossed my arms as she pulled his hair. And after their screeches drew Mr. Compton away from his yard work and inside the house, after he separated his children, after he turned to me and asked, “Jamie, what happened?” I spilled my truth.

“Marc started it,” I said.

He was grounded after that, though I can’t recall for how long. What I do remember, with stunning clarity, is his betrayed look, and the instinctive knowledge that this would mark the end of an era.

The following year, instead of valentines, I received embarrassing nicknames, incessant teasing, and a newfound rivalry with my best friend’s little brother.

In hindsight, Marc was less of a “difficult” kid and more of an under-stimulated, high-energy one. Eternally bored, a little too smart for his own good, and definitely too skilled with computers. He was put in every sport under the sun and succeeded at all of them. But there was a restlessness inside him, and the endless pranks and constant mischief helped assuage that.

“Typical gifted child acting out,” one of Dad’s girlfriends once said. She was a psychologist, and I really liked her. In fact, she may have been my favorite out of all the women he’d brought home. For a while I hoped she’d become my stepmom, but none of Dad’s relationships seemed to last more than a couple of years—a problem, since I didn’t seem to be able to stop myself from growing very attached to them all. But for one reason or another, his partners always left, and even though Dad recovered quickly, their departure never failed to make me feel alone, abandoned, and maybe a little guilty. Was it my fault? Was I too needy? Should I have made myself scarcer when they came over? Was that why Mom had left me right after I was born?

Or maybe this was just the nature of relationships: Transient. Fragile. Finite. Not worth pursuing.

Over time, I formed my own coping strategies. All I could control was my behavior; I needed to be as considerate and high-achieving as possible, and if I accomplished that, maybe people would contemplate sticking around. And if they didn’t . . . I taught myself to be grateful for what they would leave behind. I’m grateful to Dad’s girlfriends for teaching me how to fish, how to use tampons, how to bake bread. And, of course, that Marc Compton was a bit of a misunderstood genius.

I saw hints of it, too. The speed with which he’d finish his homework if it meant getting out of the house to hang out with his friends. The books he’d read sprawled on the living room couch, all above his age level. The surgical precision of his jabs, as though he knew exactly what to say to annoy the crap out of everyone.

But all in all, once Marc stopped being the boy I adored and became something between a little goblin and a full-blown villain, Tabitha and I began spending more time at my house, and that seemed to suit him just fine. For a few years, he seemed to forget my name and didn’t address me as anything but Four Eyes, Shorty, Nerd, Cheese Grater, and a few other zingers that managed to address whatever physical attribute of mine was most prominent (and most insecurity-yielding) at the time. He eventually settled on Butt Paper, after a mortifying two hours in which I walked around our middle school with toilet paper stuck to my shoe. Marc was the one who told me to get rid of it—Tabitha was at home sick, and I clearly had no other trustworthy friends—but the nickname proved impossible to shed. Then again, since he constantly addressed Tabitha as Her Royal Shittiness, while Tabitha called him Mom and Dad’s Oopsie Baby, things could have been way worse for me.

I pushed back some. Called him Marky, which I knew he hated. He had some funny-looking years, too—he was gangly, tall and skinny to the extreme, his bones too long for his body and too prominently structured for his face. But I still felt protective of him, and deep down I knew the constant badgering was the only way he could relate to us. As we got older, as Marc became busier with his own life, as the teasing morphed into something lazier—something that felt a lot like ignoring us—I almost missed it.

And then he started high school.

“How is my crappy little brother popular, and you and I aren’t?” Tabitha asked me during PE, in the middle of a partner stretch.

“Well, we aren’t unpopular.”

She gave me her best Are you for fucking real? stare, but I didn’t back down.

“Tab, we’re fine. We have friends. Boyfriends. We have each other, and great grades, extracurriculars and band, National Honor Society. We write for the school newspaper, and the other day Mrs. Niles said we’re her favorite students—” I realized how shrill and desperate I was starting to sound, and abruptly shut up.

It was halfway through junior year. Due to the incomprehensible sorcery of the school district’s calculations, Marc was only two grades behind us. And, shockingly, seemed to have the entire school in his thrall.

“Why on earth have three girls—one of whom is a senior—asked me for his number in the last two weeks? Why is half the soccer team hanging out with him at my house?”

I blinked. “Isn’t Marc a freshman?”

“Yes!”

“Hmm. Maybe you shouldn’t share his contact information with a senior, then—”

“I’m not giving out my loser brother’s number to a senior or anyone else, but I need to understand why they want it and why he has a giant friend group who seems to have nothing better to do than coming over at seven a.m. to drive him to school!”

I cocked my head and tried to conjure Marc Compton. He was less childlike than even the year before, for sure. His voice wasn’t as squeaky and prone to cracking. He had a crooked smile and seemed at ease in his body, and if I really applied myself to some method acting, I could maybe figure out what the girls saw in him. “Well, he’s growing into his looks. He’s good at sports. He’s charismatic and probably fun to be around—”

“I once saw him kiss a slug with my own two eyes.”

“Oh, I was there. Those other girls, though? They did not bear witness to that opinion-making event. We know the real Marc, but who else does?”

Tabitha rolled her eyes, muttered something about how humanity was doomed, and went back to stretching her quads.

But things had changed. In the hallways at school, Marc no longer acknowledged me—not even to make fun of me—and that year I exchanged fewer words with him than with the mechanic who fixed my car at the Jiffy Lube. If a vengeful angel were to drop from the skies and chop off three of my fingers, I could still count our interactions on one hand.

The first was in the school cafeteria, after I patted my pockets and realized I must have left my wallet in my locker.

“I’m so sorry,” I told the notoriously ill-tempered lunch lady, mortified. “I’m going to go grab it and run back—”

“I got it, Butt Paper,” a familiar but surprisingly deep voice said from somewhere behind me. A handful of bills appeared on my tray, but when I turned to thank Marc, he was already immersed in conversation with someone else and I was forgotten.

The second was a few months later, when he walked in on me doing my homework in the Comptons’ kitchen. I’d heard someone enter the room but didn’t look up, figuring it was Tabitha. A couple of minutes later, when I lifted my gaze, I found him stopped in his tracks, quietly staring at me with a soft smile on his lips.

Weird.

“Um, Tabitha’s on the phone with CJ,” I explained.

“Ah.” It came out a little raspy, and he cleared his throat. Surprisingly, he didn’t leave. Instead, he said, “Niall Holcomb, huh?”

“What? Oh.” Niall and I dated for my last two years of high school. He was the ideal first boyfriend—always kind, never pushy, busy enough with his own life not to demand too much from someone whose main priority would always be academics. Namely, me. Like Marc, he played basketball. In fact, Marc had basically stolen his spot on the team. “Yeah,” I said. I was surprised he had noticed we were together, since Niall and I kept a pretty low profile.

Marc’s lips flattened. “He treating you well?”

“. . . Yes?”

“Are you answering me or asking me?”

“Yes. He is.” I blinked, confused. “Why? Are you going to tell me a dark secret about him? Is he a sociopath? Does he keep a family of porcelain dolls in his locker? Always carries zip ties with him? Toenail fungus?”

Marc huffed a laugh. “I wish I could. But he’s a really good guy.”

“Then . . . why do you wish you could?”

He shrugged. Did not explain himself. “What are you and Tab up to, by the way?”

“I’m waiting for her to drive to band practice together.”

“Ah.” He nodded and walked past me, grabbing a bottle of water from the fridge. He was so tall, I couldn’t believe that he’d once been tiny enough to hold in my arms. The features that had seemed to swallow his face just a couple of years ago had turned into something almost disturbingly attractive, especially in combination with his dark hair and gray eyes. “How’s the trombone going?” he asked, leaning against the counter.

“Poorly.”

“Why?”

“Because I can’t play it.”

“Come on, Butt Paper. Don’t be too hard on yourself.”

“No, for real, Marky. I play the tuba.”

I watched him bite back a smile. “They’re the same, aren’t they?”

“Nope.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.” I took a deep breath. “Don’t be alarmed, but it’s the reason they have different names.”

“That can’t be true.” He shook his head, not bothering to hide his amusement.

“Let’s bet on it.”

His eyebrow rose. “What do you want to bet?”

“If I’m right,” I told him, “you’re mowing my dad’s lawn this summer.” I hated doing that so much. I would barter a million chores to avoid it.

“Seems fair. But if I’m right . . .” He hesitated. That smirky half smile that seemed to permanently reside on his face suddenly faded. For a moment, he looked almost nervous. But also preternaturally determined.

“Yeah?” I prompted, a little breathless.

“If I’m right, then you’ll go on—”

I never got around to hearing his side of the bet because Tabitha walked in and interrupted us. But Marc must have done some independent research and read up on brass instruments, because even though I never saw him at my house, that year I didn’t have to mow the lawn a single time.

As I moved into my senior year, there were big and little moments with him.

When the girl he was seeing called me a bitch for accidentally walking into her, he broke up with her in under ten minutes.

When I spent the night at Tabitha’s and couldn’t go back to sleep after a nightmare, Marc, on his way to get a glass of water, found me huddled on the living room couch, sat next to me for hours, and took my mind off my bad dream by telling me the backstories of every single non-playable character in his favorite video game.

When I got the call that my grandma’s health had taken a turn for the worse, I don’t remember what Dad told me on the phone or how I explained the situation to the Comptons. That day, and the ones that followed, are a blur, and my only memory anchoring me is of Marc breaking the speed limit to get me to the hospital and his hand reaching across the center console, never letting go of mine.

All in all, I don’t know if it’s fair to say that Marc and I were friends during our teenage years. But somehow, when I really needed him, he was always around.

It took me a long, long while to realize that it wasn’t by accident.

Marc came to our senior prom as the date of Maddy Rodgers, a very beautiful, kind, intelligent, popular girl who managed to graduate valedictorian but never to learn that my name was not, in fact, Amy.

Tabitha and I were so focused on what was to come, we barely noticed. I was going to Berkeley. Tabitha and CJ, to Colorado. Niall had a scholarship to Bennington, and neither of us was interested in attempting a long-distance relationship. Still, the end of high school felt like a momentous occasion, and after years of being almost disgustingly good, we decided to live it up a little. Tabitha and I lied to our parents and said we’d sleep over at each other’s places. Then we took our hard-earned Froyo salaries, pooled funds with Niall and CJ, booked two hotel rooms, and—

Got caught.

The moment we walked into the hotel lobby and saw Tabitha’s parents waiting for us will go down as one of the most mortifying in the history of man.

“How did you know where we’d be?” Tabitha asked her mom from the back seat of the car.

“Jamie’s dad called to talk to her. And that’s how your castle of lies unraveled.”

I buried my face in my hands and wished upon a deathly star.

“‘Castle’?” Tabitha snorted. “It’s barely a hut. We just wanted to hang out with our boyfriends for once. For eighteen years we’ve been nothing but angels! We’ve literally never even tried to sneak out—”

“Probably the reason you’re so bad at it,” Mr. Compton pointed out. Fairly.

“How did you know what hotel we’d booked, though?” I asked slowly. In another small act of rebellion, I’d had a tiny bite of CJ’s edible, which made my brain sluggish and my surroundings a bit too thick to wade through.

“We didn’t. But Marc said it was the one where most seniors were planning to go, so we took an educated guess.”

Tabitha said nothing, but even in my half-dazed state I knew to be terrified of the way her entire body stiffened like a hammer. And when her parents drove us back to their house (with the promise that “Tomorrow morning, when you wake up, Jamie’s dad will be here, too, and you two are going to get properly yelled at.”), she didn’t hesitate. Marc was already asleep. But Tabitha, powered by Mike’s Hard Lemonade and the alcohol-metabolizing enzymes she had yet to develop, barged into his room and turned on the light.

“I can’t believe you fucking told them,” she hissed at her brother.

I followed her inside and closed the door behind me, knowing that if the Comptons heard them fight, we’d be in even bigger trouble. When I turned, Marc was sitting on the edge of his bed, bare chested and bleary eyed. He ran his hand through his hair, yawned for twenty leisurely seconds, but didn’t play dumb. “Come on, Tab,” he said.

“‘Come on’? What the fuck is up with you and ruining my life?”

“They found out on their own. And you two were out after curfew and weren’t picking up your phones. They were going to call the police.”

“So you told them about the stupid hotel!”

“I only told them where other seniors were going. I had no idea what you two were up to. But if you’re planning on starting to live your life like normal people and slip out more often, I’m very happy to teach you how not to get caught—”

“You couldn’t let me have this one thing, huh?”

“Tab . . .” He rolled his eyes. “Just go to bed.”

“No! How would you feel if I snitched you out? How would you feel if I told your secrets?”

Marc stood and widened his arms. “You’d be welcome to it, but I don’t have any. Listen, can I go back to sleep? It’s not my fault if you two are still virgins at the ripe old age of—”

Tabitha moved so fast, the glitter of her dress brought to mind a shooting star. I saw her grab the drawer in Marc’s desk, pull out a box, and then throw it on the rug in front of his bed.

The box opened, and a few dozen papers scattered around it.

Pictures. Lots of them. Pictures of . . .

I blinked.

Was that . . . ?

“You asshole,” Tabitha snarled. “Did you have fun telling Mom and Dad my business? I hope you did, because I’m having the time of my life telling my best friend that you’re fucking gone over her. Especially knowing that she thinks you’re just a bratty little piece of shit!”

I owlishly looked up at Marc, expecting him to burst into laughter and deny it. But there was no quick retort, no jab. His jaw clenched as though he was gritting his teeth. He kept his eyes on his sister, and I was briefly afraid that the fight would turn ugly in a way I couldn’t handle. But then he said, “Get the fuck out of my room before I tell Mom and Dad that you’re drunk, too.”

“Asshole,” Tabitha repeated, storming out in a blaze of sequins.

She left me behind, and I bit the inside of my cheek before cautiously asking, “Is that really me? In the pictures?”

Marc did something I hadn’t seen in about a decade: he flushed.

“Jesus, Jamie.” He ran a nervous hand down his face. It was the first time he’d used my real name in . . . forever.

I went down to my knees. The ball gown I’d worn to prom and never taken off pooled around me, a puddle of blue tulle and pearls. Gingerly, I picked up a photo. “I remember this one. It’s from—”

“The spelling bee you won.” He knelt, too. Gently took the picture from my hand. With surprising care, he started stacking them all back into the box, like they were his hoard. His treasure. Not to be gazed upon by mere mortals.

“Why?” I asked.

“Why?” He stopped to meet my eyes. “Did you really just ask me why? Are you high or something?”

“Actually, yeah. I think I might be.” It was probably the edible, the reason I felt so detached from this moment. As though this was happening to someone else and I was just watching a recording of it. “How serious is this?” I asked academically, pointing at the box.

A single eyebrow crept up. “What do you think?”

Very, my slow brain provided.

“But don’t flatter yourself too much,” he added, a little cold. “I’m probably just stuck at some weird stage of my psychosexual development. I’ll grow out of it.”

Right. Probably. “I—”

“Can you get the hell out of my room, now?” He stood. Carefully put the box back in the drawer. “I was asleep before my psycho sister and her psycho friend barged in.”

“Oh. Yeah, I . . . sorry.” It took me a couple of tries to get to my feet. I started walking out, disoriented.

Stopped when I heard, “Jamie.”

I turned around.

The corners of Marc’s lips twitched. “Since the secret’s out . . .” He grabbed his phone from his nightstand, lifted it, and snapped a single picture.

Of me.

In my prom dress.

“I really didn’t mean to get you and Tab in trouble,” he murmured. “But selfishly, I’m glad you didn’t spend the night with Niall.”

“I . . . Why?”

“Because when I saw you in that dress earlier tonight, I . . .” He exhaled. Shook his head. “He doesn’t deserve you. No one does.”

No one. “What about you?”

“I deserve you least of all. But I want you the most. And I won’t give up. The lengths I’m willing to go to . . . One day, I’ll show you.”

I stood there, mystified, for a long moment.

Until: “You can go now,” he said gently.

And so I left.

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Hey Marc,

It’s been such a long time! I didn’t get to see you during your junior year because you were doing that exchange to Singapore, and this year I was too busy with my internships to go back to Illinois for the holidays. Tabitha has been keeping me updated, and I wanted to congratulate you on your college acceptances. You’ll love Boston, I’m sure.

Hugs,

Jamie

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Thanks, Butt Paper. Hope you’re doing great.

Sent from my iPhone

The next time I saw Marc, I was twenty-one. It was during the winter holidays, two and a half years after our previous encounter. And I was not ready.

I knew that he’d matured. He was, at last, all grown up, and not just because he was legally an adult.

CJ and I visited Marc in Boston and it was actually fun. We got to talking about some of the shit he did when we were younger and he apologized like, a million times??? Tabitha had texted me the previous summer. It kind of worries me. I mean, who even am I, if you take away my hatred for my little brother? What will be the new core of my identity?

And: Why is he doing so well in his classes? God, I might be the black sheep of the family after all.

And: I had a fight with CJ and Marc offered to beat him up. It’s the sweetest thing anyone has ever done for me.

When Dad, his current girlfriend, and I walked up the Comptons’ snow-crusted driveway for their holiday party, I braced myself for a new and improved Marc.

I did not expect that my heart would stop and my knees wobble.

Because he was still Marc. Still the boy who used to burp the national anthem and leave toothpaste globs in the sink. But he was also the product of the last few years of his life, years in which I hadn’t seen him. That made him at once the same and different, and . . .

“Hey, Butt Paper,” he said, nothing but fondness in his voice. Then I was in his arms, reaching up, and I couldn’t believe how tall and fully fleshed out he was, the scratch of his stubble against my cheek, his warm, enveloping hug.

“Wow,” I mumbled into his shoulder.

“‘Wow’?” His voice was deep in my ear. I felt him pull me even closer into him.

“Just . . . I think I missed you?”

Soft laughter rolled out of him. It vibrated through my coat, right into my chest. Northern Illinois, in late December, and I was suddenly hot. “Why do you sound so surprised?” He pulled back. He’d never been nervous or insecure, but his new smile seemed so sturdy, so solid and confident, I couldn’t look away.

“I don’t know.” I shrugged. Collected myself. “I didn’t think I had it in me to miss someone who programmed my computer to write scrotum every time I typed the word he.”

“Damn, that was such a good macro. I bet I still have it somewhere.” His gaze rested quietly on me. Turned into something a little more . . . avid. “I missed you, too, Jamie.”

“Yeah?”

He hesitated, and by the time he opened his mouth again, Mrs. Compton was there, taking my coat, fussing over me, and I didn’t get another moment with Marc until dinner. It was a nice meal, but the tension in the air was obvious—some ongoing conversation in the Compton family that I wasn’t privy to, and I only started grasping bits and pieces of it toward the end.

“. . . not a good reason to drop out of college,” Mr. Compton was saying when I tuned in to the chatter at his end of the table.

“It is, actually,” Marc countered calmly. “I can always go back to school if I want to. But the angel investors are not going to wait around forever.”

“Could you not do both?” Tabitha asked. “School and the start-up?”

Marc shook his head. “Not if I want to give the company its best shot.”

“But you said the tech is already developed.”

“What’s the tech for?” Dad interjected.

“A file-transfer system. Much quicker and nimbler than what’s currently on the market.” Marc went on to explain the details of it. I could see them fly over the heads of everyone at the table, but I’d taken enough computer science classes in college to be impressed.

“If the tech is as good as you said,” Dad’s girlfriend interrupted him, “have you considered selling it to someone else? That way, you’ll be free to finish school while they bring it to market.”

Mr. Compton lit up. “That’s what we’ve been telling him all weekend. See, she agrees with us!”

Marc sighed and rose to his feet. “I’ll be right back.”

Mrs. Compton frowned. “Where are you going?”

“Cigarette break.”

“But you don’t smoke?”

He grinned wide. For a second, I couldn’t breathe. “Let’s pretend that I do and that I’m not just trying to get away from you.”

I waited for a few minutes before excusing myself, saying I needed to use the restroom. I found Marc on the back porch, head tipped up toward the stars. The air was gelid, so much so that every breath of his turned into a white puff, but he didn’t seem to mind. I wondered if Boston was like California, and the sky there never managed to look as pretty as the one here at home.

“Aren’t you cold?” I asked.

He spared me a brief glance, then returned to the stars. “If you’re here to talk me out of—”

“I’m here to ask if you’d like me to bring you a coat.”

He looked back at me. After a short pause, a slow smile spread on his lips. “Come on,” he said, inviting me to take a seat next to him on the porch swing. Once I was there, close enough to feel his warmth, he unfolded a blanket, covered us both, and we sat in comfortable quiet for a while.

“Are you going to do it?” I asked eventually.

“Do what?”

“Drop out.”

He exhaled deeply. “I don’t know. I want to, but not a single person in the universe thinks that I should, so I’ll probably just sell the tech and—”

“I do.”

He gave me a surprised look. “You do.”

“I think you should leave school, that is.”

“Is that so?”

“Yup.”

“Well, well, well.”

“Why do you look so delighted?”

“Can’t help it.” His smile took my breath away. “Little Jamie Malek—prim and proper, by the book, speeding toward med school since first grade—is now telling me to blow up my whole life. It’s making me feel a certain kind of way.”

I rolled my eyes. “I do think you should massage the plan a bit. You should take a leave of absence and not drop out. Maybe give yourself a deadline—if you can’t bring the tech to market by a reasonable date, you go back to school. But . . . you shouldn’t give up. It sounds like a great idea, a great product. And it’s your tech. You shouldn’t have to sell it if you don’t want to.”

That toothpaste-commercial grin of his again—perfect and happy and hopeful. Boyish. “Yeah?”

I nodded. “Actually, I have some money put away. Mostly what my grandma left me. And it’s just there, collecting dust and being gnawed at by inflation, so—”

“Jamie. No.”

“Yes.”

“I have financial backers. I don’t need—”

“I know you don’t. I’m asking you for the opportunity to invest in equity capital. I’d rather do it to support someone I believe in, someone I know and care about, than—”

“We’ve barely seen each other in the last few years—”

“True, but I know you. I always have. You get it, right?”

He did. I was sure of it. I could practically taste it in the way his body suddenly tensed. “Keep your money,” he said after a long silence, voice pitched low. His hand found my knee under the blanket. Closed around it. Sent hot shivers up my thigh and into my belly. “And let me take you out on a date.”

Without any forethought, my entire body screamed: Yes. I closed my eyes, swallowed the syllable, and forced myself to sound amused. “What’s this? Community service at the senior center?”

“You are two years older than me, Jamie.”

“Twenty-one and nineteen is a big difference.”

“Yeah, of course. You could be my mother. Let me take you out anyway.”

“Marc. You live in Boston,” I said instead of No.

“Not for long. And you’re going to med school at Berkeley—”

“I haven’t been accepted yet.”

“Come on, Jamie. I know you as much as you know me. You’re going to med school at Berkeley, and if I take a leave of absence, I’ll likely move to the West Coast. Bay Area. That’s where everything happens. And that’s where you are.”

He was still so stubborn. Determined. Pure single-mindedness.

It made me want to lean in to him. Ask for a kiss. Kiss him myself. But . . . “I actually have a boyfriend.”

“Nice. He can fuck off.”

“Marc.”

“No, I’m serious. What’s his name?”

“Shane.”

“Shane can fuck right off.”

I couldn’t help laughing. Hated myself quite a bit for it.

“Listen, Jamie, date us both. I can deal with that. And then choose the better guy.”

I huffed. “You seem awfully certain that I’d choose you.”

“Oh, sweetheart. I really am.” He leaned closer and my heart threatened to detonate. I could feel his breath against my cheek. His palm, wide open, climbing up my inner thigh. Heat licking through my spine. “I’d make sure of it.”

“I . . . I can’t, Marc.” I had to physically wrench myself away from him. I scooted to the end of the swing because maybe I couldn’t, but I really, really wanted to.

A long silence. A deep, gathering, frustrated sigh. And then he nodded and said, “It wouldn’t be right, anyway. This wasn’t the plan. I need to stick to it.”

I blinked in confusion. “What plan?”

“The thing is, you’re perfect, Jamie. Absolutely fantastic—always have been. I’ve never been anything but amazed by you. And I don’t think I’m there yet. I want to deserve you.”

“I . . . don’t understand.”

“I’m going to get this right. I’m going to put together this company and successfully bring the tech to market.” His smile was resolute. “And once I’m worthy of it, I’ll ask you for another chance.”

“Marc, I . . . No. I’m not perfect. Not at all.” I shook my head, thinking about the profound depression I’d fallen into during my sophomore year, about how lonely and anxious I felt sometimes, how I constantly questioned whether I was good enough to become a doctor. About how I, after a lifetime of being left behind, found it next to impossible to trust people to stick around. Even Tabitha and I weren’t as close as we used to be, and despite my efforts our bond seemed to be growing weaker by the year. “Your impression of me . . . I’m not really the person you used to . . .” Have a crush on, I didn’t say. But he got it.

And said, “That’s fine, Jamie. Since I’m not the person who spent most of his life in love with you, either.”

My heart drummed against my rib cage. I watched Marc as he stood. Draped his side of the blanket on my knees. Added in a low whisper, “And for what it’s worth, you’re still the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

He bent to press a lingering kiss to my flushed cheek, and walked back inside the house.

Four years later, Marc Evan Compton was on the cover of Forbes.

And five years later, everything fell apart.