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I pinch my arm until my eyes water.

“Screw her.” Keaton rips the back off the frame, taking the stock photo of a little girl out. “She doesn’t even look like you.”

The picture falls to the floor as she returns the cardboard back to the homemade picture frame. There were three at one time, each with a different message I painted on top.Mommy and Me,Happy Mother’s Day, and the one in Keaton’s hand,I love you. Even though I added my name in blue on the bottom of each and drew the stars and hearts, my picture has never been in any of them.

As soon as we step out of the building, Keaton jerks me to a stop on the sidewalk and shoves the frame at me. “Hold this.” Her emotions are all over enough for the both of us as she fishes her phone out of her purse. She swipes under my eyes and does the same to herself, and then she holds her phone out to take a selfie of us.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“What she should have done when you were seven. I’m taking a picture of you, and we’re going to a drugstore or wherever you go to print a picture and putting it in this frame, where it belongs.” She turns to me, all the tears she wiped reappearing. “You deserve better than that woman, Bennett. She brought you into this world for selfish reasons and then left you to fight through it on your own. Just because you weren’t the answer for her, she made you think you weren’t enough, but you are. You’re my answer for a million things, and I love you forever and all that shit, so on three, say, ‘I love you, Keats,’ and smile for the damn picture.”

None of the tears flooding out of me are self-induced, and when she lifts her arm again, she counts down.

I tell her, “I love you, Keats,” at the same time she says, “I love you more, Bennie,” and taps the screen.

Our faces are blotchy. Eyeliner is smeared, and mascara-blackened streaks stain our cheeks.

But within an hour, the picture is in the frame, and inside of two hours, the frame is on my nightstand.

Keaton’s asleep when I sneakup to the loft to Marco’s bed. The comforter tents over my head, blocking the light from my phone as I sit in the middle of the mattress. I stare at the screen. My background is mostly covered with apps, but even if it wasn’t, no one would know what they were looking at.

Except for Dane.

Our clothes in a pile on my bedroom floor in San Francisco, zoomed so far in all you see is the pocket of his jeans and a splash of white lace from my bra. He set it as my background, so I would think of him naked anytime I saw it. I kept it because it reminds me of him, and I want to remember how we were before I ruined it. Ruined us.

I cried for two days after he left me in the parking lot of the mortuary. Maggie would pull my head onto her lap and stroke my hair, humming an old lullaby she said her grandmother had rocked her to. She’d done the same thing after the wedding, but after my last visit, it felt different. Final.

The only other time I tried to call him since then, his phone went to a voice mail he hadn’t set up. I was packing to move to LA and found his necklace. My heart hurt for him. The way it does now.

The silence between rings is louder with each one. I scrape my nails over the silver bar hanging around my neck. I’m expecting the voice of the woman to tell me his mailbox isn’t set up when—“Hello?”

A low, hushed voice confuses me, and I check if I hit the wrong contact, but the screen saysSnake.

“Lex,” Chevy says after a beat, and I bring the phone back. “You all right?”

“Why are you answering Dane’s phone?”

He snorts. “He’s passed out on a log after playing one of Lincoln’s drinking games. The better question is, why are you calling it?”

Keaton didn’t tell me Dane was going camping. She hasn’t mentioned him much at all lately, even though she’s been sharing a house with him the past month.

I was awarded another middle-of-the-night phone call when Liam tagged their apartment wall to tell her they were moving. Through the squeals and flood of decorating ideas, she mentioned Dane was going to let them live there rent-free until they could get approved for a mortgage. I wanted to ask what happened then. If Dane left, never to be heard from again.

I drag both of Marco’s pillows under the comforter with me and stack them, bending in the middle to lay my head on top. “Because I’m not all right, Chevy,” I say, answering both his questions.

Then I tell him about my mom. How she would barely look at me and how she had already been living here when Keaton and I were in the car accident that earned me a week in the hospital and during both my graduations. I admit how the apartment has felt wrong since we got back. The entire city too small and suffocating now that I know she’s out there.

Chevy lets out a sigh. “Where to then?”

“I have no idea,” I say.

I press my nose into the pillow. Marco smells amazing, and I frown at the thought of leaving him. He has a cousin itching to take over my half of the lease. The same cousin who knew a guy who had a friend who was Aria’s sister.

“Well, you know my vote, and I can safely cast another three in favor of Phoenix.”

I offer an, “Ugh,” in response. “You really want to bring Bentley into this conversation?”

“Fuck no.” The sound of a beer opening cracks through the speaker. “I’m counting the dumbass sleeping on a chunk of wood right now.”

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