Page 3 of Again with Feeling

“That you LIKE each other.”

“Well—”

“But you can’t ever get the timing right—”

“Or you’re a donkey,” Keme put in.

“—and everyone knows you’d be perfect together,” Millie said, “if you’d just KISS!”

The word echoed through the market. At the next table, the Cornhusker dad covered the baby’s ears. And remember that poor seagull that almost hit a piling? It was perched on a hawser at that moment, and I kid you not: it. fell. off. Just rocked backward and disappeared.

Working a finger in my ear, I said, “Okay, I appreciate the concern, but Bobby and I are just friends, and we both know what’s best for us—”

“No,” Fox said, “you don’t.”

“You clearly don’t, dear,” Indira said.

“Definitely not,” the mom at the next table said. She snorted. “Just friends? That young man couldn’t take his eyes off you.”

“Bobby is going through a really tough time,” I said, sparing a dark look for Nebraska Mom. “He’s still working through hisbreakup with West. I mean, they were engaged. And that was a big deal for him. He’s grieving. He’s processing. He’s healing.”

“I’ve heard that before,” said Cornhusker Dad.

“You know,” I said, “this is a private—”

“Really?” Fox asked over me. “Is he grieving, processing, and healing by slee—” They cut off and gave an embarrassed sidelong look at the family next to us. “Bycourtingevery eligible young man within driving distance?”

Keme still hadn’t said anything, but he was still staring at me, and his look was approaching murderous levels.

“This is what he needs right now—” I started.

“No, Dashiell,” Indira said. “It’s not.”

“Definitely not,” Nebraska Mom said again, this time with a definite ’tude.

“Okay, well, I think it is.” I was surprised by the sharpness of my tone, and to judge by the looks on everyone else’s face, so were they. “I know you all want what’s best for me and Bobby, but you’re not part of our—our relationship, for lack of a better word. So, you don’t understand.”

As soon as I heard myself, I wanted to wince. It was such a stereotypically teenager defense that I actually thought I could feel the ghost of sixteen-year-old Dash breathing down my neck.

“Tell us,” Fox said in a dangerously even voice. “What don’t we understand?”

I wanted to say no. I wanted to tell them I was done discussing this. But I’d dug myself a hole, and now all I could do—it seemed—was try to dig myself out of it. “Have you ever heard of a rebound relationship?”

It was Keme who spoke this time: slowly, clearly, and dark as a bottomless pit. “You are an idiot.”

“I don’t have to explain myself to any of you,” I said, getting out of my seat. “Bobby just needs to get this out of his system, and then things will go back to normal, and—”

But my phone buzzed again, and I checked it—a Pavlovian response.

It wasn’t a message from Hugo, though. It was an incoming call.

I answered, and a prerecorded voice said, “This call is originating at the Oregon State Penitentiary from,” and then another, familiar voice broke in and said two words. A name. “Vivienne Carver.”

Chapter 2

“To accept this collect call, press one—” the prerecorded message continued.

My face must have shown something of what I was feeling because Indira said, “What’s wrong?”

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