I should. I knew I had to. But I panicked. I couldn’t sit there and pretend nothing had happened. I wasn’t ready, or strong enough, and the scene from that morning was still fresh in my mind. The embarrassment I had felt when I had seen Nathan.

“I actually feel sick,” I said. “I have super bad cramps. I need to lay down.”

“Oh, bummer,” Kylie said. “Take some Midol.” She didn’t look the least bit suspicious because Kylie never believed anyone had ill intention. It was a gift she had, of pure happiness, all the time. Happiness I would destroy if she found out the truth.

Rory was eyeing me like she knew there was more to it than that, but she would never ask. She would think about it, analyze, study me. The one person I really had to avoid, truthfully, was Jessica. And, of course, Tyler. He knew almost all there was to know, but even he didn’t know it went way beyond just making out in a car. Obviously Nathan wasn’t going to tell, though I didn’t want to see him either.

“Thanks. Glad you’re both back,” I said, forcing a smile.

Then I went down the hall and shut the door firmly to my little room. Sighing, I fell onto my bed and answered Phoenix.

We texted back and forth for three hours, about everything, about nothing, until the TV in the living room went off and the line of light under my door disappeared. I felt safe in my room and relieved when Rory and Kylie went to bed. Classes started the next day, and I wasn’t sure I was ready for the pressure of schoolwork, but at midnight, in the dark, with Phoenix distracting me, I thought I could deal.

He was funny, in a sly, side door kind of way.

He was also clearly interested in keeping the conversation going, and maybe it was me, maybe it would have been anyone who would talk to him, but I was grateful.

And even as I worried that developing feelings for a guy I felt grateful to was seriously pathetic, I couldn’t stop myself.

Nite, I finally texted him when my eyes wouldn’t stay open anymore.

See you tomorrow.

I closed my eyes, but I wished he was lying next to me, his quiet, steady breathing soothing me the way it had the past two nights.

It wasn’t good. It wasn’t good at all.

I knew I should cancel lunch with him. I knew I should pull away. That I couldn’t let myself get pulled into a friendship I wasn’t ready for, because I was still too raw, still holding on to my secret.

But I couldn’t pull away.

Just the opposite.

* * *

When I saw Phoenix walking across the food court in the university center the next day, I bit my lip to keep from smiling too broadly. I was sitting at a table with plastic chairs around it, my backpack on the floor next to me. I had decided to wear another sundress again because they were so comfortable. My leg stubble was starting to grow back in, which meant I was on the edge of being a hippie, but the skirt was long enough that I had decided I didn’t care. Phoenix was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, nothing weird, but without a backpack, he did look a little unusual. But what mostly struck me was the way he moved through the crowd, looking neither right or left, with a confidence and an aggressive walk that made people shift out of his way, probably without even realizing they did it.

He was swinging car keys around his finger, which meant he was ignoring his lack of a license again. I wondered why he didn’t worry that if he got pulled over, he would wind up back in jail. When he got closer to me, the corner of his mouth turned up, and he was doing what I was doing—trying not to smile too much. We were both like a couple of middle schoolers making eye contact at a dance.

Flipping his hair out of his eye, he dropped into the chair next to me, his legs sprawling out. “Hey.”

“Hey. You found me okay.”

He smiled. “I have good tracking skills. You know, and the texts with the specific instructions like ‘Next to KFC in the food court’ helped, too.”

“Good.”

“Though I don’t think you needed to point out what you’re wearing. I’m pretty sure I’d recognize you whether your dress was floral or solid.”

I wasn’t sure why I had done that. He was right. We didn’t recognize people based on their clothes, so why would I think he needed a description of my sundress to find me? “I overexplain. Sorry. What do you want to eat? I have a ton of points on my meal plan and I never use them all, so lunch is on me.”

“I can pay for myself,” he said, even though we both knew he couldn’t.

“But why should you when I have all this credit? Last year there was, like, two hundred bucks unused at the end of the year, and it doesn’t get credited back to you.” I didn’t have a meal plan anymore since I wasn’t living in the dorm, but he didn’t know that. I had a swipe card that billed everything to a central account where my tuition and books showed up, too. I figured I would go in and pay the food expenses myself before my parents saw it and it would allow me to trick Phoenix into letting me pay for lunch.

“Okay,” he said, but he looked reluctant. He did insist on carrying my tray back to the table after we ordered. I got a bowl of soup and he got a burrito the size of my head.

When we sat back down, the group of girls at the table next to us stared boldly. I knew one of them from my literature class, and the others I had seen at parties, but I didn’t know their names. I smiled tightly at them when we made eye contact, but they didn’t look away. I could hear them whispering.

“OMG, who is that chick Robin with? Is he like her bodyguard or something?”

I knew that Phoenix heard them, too, because his shoulders were rigid, but otherwise he showed no change in emotion. He was better, a thousand times better, at hiding his emotion than I was. I knew I probably looked uncomfortable. But I just sat there and spread out my napkin in my lap.

“Bodyguard? She doesn’t need a bodyguard, she needs a stylist. She looks like hell this year. WTF happened to her?”

I paused with my spoon halfway to my mouth.

“I heard she has cancer, that’s why. I mean, look at her. I’m surprised she’s even here for classes.”

“I heard she spent the summer at rehab. Drugs.”

“No, it was for sex addiction.”

Phoenix made a sound of disgust and he leaned over and touched one of the girls’ arms. She jumped and looked at him like he was a zombie out for her flesh.

“I’m sorry to interrupt your gossip session,” he said. “But we can hear every word you’re saying and it’s rude. In case you didn’t realize that.”

Their mouths all dropped open. Two had the decency to look shamefaced, but the third just sneered. “Sorry,” she said, and it was about as insincere as you can get. “But now you can clear up the mystery for us. Who are you? I’m Frannie.”

“Go fuck yourself, Frannie,” he said in a very polite voice, a tight smile on his face. Then he picked up my tray and his and moved us three tables over.

They had no response, clearly as shocked as I was.

I followed him, their gasps of indignation washing over me, not sure how I felt. I was embarrassed that people were talking about me, that my appearance was so noticeably different it was grounds for gossip. But at the same time, I didn’t really give a shit what they thought of me. They weren’t my friends and never would be. They were bored girls with no real worries in their lives. I had been one of them. But now I knew I had no business judging anyone else.

I also wasn’t sure how I felt about Phoenix feeling like he had to defend me.

“You shouldn’t have to listen to that shit,” Phoenix said, his jaw tense, his nostrils flaring. He moved back and forth in front of the table for a second before he yanked the chair out and sat down. I could see him pulling himself in, controlling his emotions and his body.

“It’s okay,” I told him. “It doesn’t matter, and they are right, you know. I do look like hell. But I’m okay with it.” I was. If it truly bothered me, I would put on makeup. But I couldn’t work up the energy to worry about it. It was nice not to have to reapply lipstick every hour.

“You do not.” Phoenix glanced away for a second, and when he looked back at me, my breath caught in my throat. He looked at me like I was important, special. “You’re beautiful, you know.”

To him, I was. I could see that and it had more impact than any bitchy comments from girls I didn’t know. “Thank you,” I whispered.

“Are they right, in any way?” he asked, and I realized his face was pale. “Do you have cancer?”

Oh, God. I shook my head rapidly, feeling guilty all over again. “No! No, of course not. I’m not sick at all. And no, I didn’t go to rehab either, though I did stop drinking because I had one of those nights where I blacked out and it scared the shit out of me.” That was as close to the truth as I could get, but I wanted him to understand that he shouldn’t feel sorry for me. I didn’t deserve his pity or sympathy.

He gave a sigh, one that seemed like relief to me, and he nodded. “I’m glad to hear it. For a second I thought, what if they’re right?” He looked like he was going to say something else, but he didn’t. He just shook his head. “Anyway. Eat your soup.”

I took a spoonful, but my appetite was gone. I couldn’t think of anything to say that wasn’t either super charged or totally generic chitchat, which seemed almost insulting. Conversation for strangers, and whatever Phoenix was, he wasn’t a stranger. So finally I asked what I wanted to know. “Can I ask you something?”

He nodded, chewing his burrito. “Sure. But make sure you’re prepared for the answer.”

That was a good point. But I still asked it anyway. I needed to know before I let myself fall any further. “Did you love Angel? Do you still love her?”