Backpack full of clothes, I ring the Wexlers' doorbell. Elliot swings it open and beams.

"You showed up."

I step inside. "Duh."

There's no smell of food cooking and most of the shoes from the mat are gone. We're really by ourselves. I breathe in the clean, cinnamon-spiced scent of his home, and wonder how the hell I ended up here.

This isn't a hotel, Lucy. You can stay for a night or two because he offered. That's all.

Elliot closes the door and wipes his palms on his jeans, his shoulders tense and his features tight.

"Well?" I cross my arms. "Are you going to show me your room?"

Family photos line the walls as we ascend the staircase, and I smile at every picture of Elliot. In one, he has a big, goofy grin on his face. In the next, he wears an indignant frown. A few steps up, he's smiling again. In another, his arms are crossed. Maybe I'm imagining it, but with every photo climbing the stairs, Elliot grows older, and the pattern continues.

Happy boy, sad boy, happy boy, sad boy.

Blue wallpaper shines metallic under the lamps of the upper level. There's something so intimate about being up here, like I'm a peasant in the royal family's living quarters. It has me feeling a little sentimental, too, though; it's like looking through a fogged window, but somewhere, deep within my mind, there is a place I once called home. A place like this.

Elliot opens a door at the end of the hall, where bright, natural light from his open windows momentarily blinds me. Coldplay and Radiohead posters hang on the navy walls. I expected it to be a wreck in here, but everything is placed in a pristine, meticulous order, like it was designed in The Sims. There isn't even a speck of dust on his flat screen TV, and an acoustic guitar gleams in the sunlight beside his bed.

"Wow," I say, "are you some kind of neat freak or something?"

"Having a messy living space is bad for my mental health." His words are clinical, like they've been recited.

"Right..." When I flop onto his plaid-sheeted bed, I'm engulfed by fluffy eiderdown blankets and pillows, and holy shit, it's like falling into a cloud. I'm bathed in the scent of clean laundry and Elliot. I want to curl up in these blankets and live here forever, but a thought pops into my head and makes my stomach sink: how many girls have been tangled up in these sheets? I can't be the first. An odd, unfamiliar feeling of jealousy bubbles within me, but I put a plug on it. Elliot stares at me and shifts his weight. Judging by that blush on his face, he's thinking about one thing. I should probably clear my stance on that, just to be on the safe side.

"So." I sit up straight. "Do you really trust me here?"

"What do you mean?"

"You do remember I'm a thief, right?"

"Well yeah, but I kind of trust you now, Luce. Should I not?"

"Of course you can trust me. But..." But I'm a little worried right now that you're just a horny teenage guy who wants to get laid and I'm here because you want sex and not because you like me the same way I like you. Yeah, I spent an unhealthy amount of time dwelling on the idea last night. This is all a little too perfect, and I like Elliot too much, too fast. In order to stay sharp, I need to be wary; even of angel boys like Elliot Wexler.

I trusted a guy too much once before and it ruined me.

"I think we should wait."

"Okay..." He sits beside me, lowering the mattress so his knee touches my leg. "What are we waiting for, exactly?"

"We should wait to hook up."

"Oh. Okay. I mean, yeah. Of course. I didn't expect us to..."

"You didn't?"

"No, I mean, we still hardly know each other." His pale cheeks are splotchy and he refuses to look at me. "Seriously, I don't expect anything like that from you. That's not why I invited you here."

I squint at him. "So you still want me here?"

"Of course I do. I told you before... I like you, Lucy. It's not about that." His eyes are so clear, candid, and blue, like the open skies. He means those words, he really does. The biggest lie he's ever told is probably hiding his pot habit from his parents.

"But do you like me as more than a friend?" I inquire, and his blush deepens.

"I think I do. Is that okay?"

Smiling, I quickly kiss him on the cheek. He touches the spot when I pull away. I like you too, I think, but don't say.

Hopping to my feet, I walk to his dresser and observe the shelf piled with trophies. Gold medals hang from a rack shaped like a hockey stick, and I point to the glass tank on his dresser.

"What's in here?" I ask.

"Should be a lizard in there somewhere," Elliot says. "His name's Chickpea."

"That's... random." I sit back on the bed, and Elliot bumps me with his shoulder.

"So, tell me about... you."

"What do you want to know?"

"Where are you from?"

"Godfrey."

"Okay. Why are you homeless?"

Too many questions, too fast. I'm not ready to drop the truth, but I don't want to lie, either, so I change the subject. "I don't want to talk about me. Let's talk about you."

"But—"

"Have you always lived here?"

His brows droop, but he says, "Pretty much, yeah. We moved to this house when my mom was pregnant with Charlotte. That was when they really started making money—they were sort of broke before that. My dad was a rookie cop and my mom was still in cooking school."

"And what about your friends? Where are they?"

He takes out his phone and opens his Facebook app. Moments later, a profile appears in my face. Katie Starling. Her profile picture is of her and some others wearing cargo gear in front of a hut, surrounded by children. I know which one is Katie because the other two volunteers are guys. But the tall, pretty blonde with the angular face stands out like a shooting star anyway. There's an obvious limelight on her. In fact, the tops of some of the kids' heads have been cropped out so there's a better close up of Katie's face.

That's interesting.

"This is Katie," Elliot says. "We've been best friends since forever."

"She's pretty. Should I be jealous?"

"What? No. She's my friend, that's all."

"Uh-huh."

"Katie and me used to be really close, same with these two other guys on my team, Eric and Mason. But then this Luke guy moved to Godfrey for hockey. Now they all hang out with him instead. Katie's dating Luke, and he doesn't like me, so..."

I snort. "Wow, some best friend."

"What?"

"I said, some best friend. What kind of person does that?" Katie's profile says she's in a relationship with Luke Kim, so I click on his profile. A guy with black hair and a kind smile appears on the screen. "Wow, he looks like a nice guy."

"Trust me, he's not. At least not to me."

"How so?"

"Well, sometimes it feels like he's intentionally trying to fuck with me. He's always competing with me on the ice, even during games when we're supposed to be working together. He started dating Katie, and since Eric's family is his billet family. Before I knew it I was just... shut out."

"And you didn't do anything about it?"

Elliot hands are suddenly shaking. Or maybe they have been this whole time. It seems I've struck a chord.

"Did something happen?" I ask.

He swallows. "Yeah. Sort of."

"What was it?"

"Uh..." If he keeps shaking I'm pretty sure he'll turn into an earthquake. "I—I shouldn't tell you. I mean, I'm not trying to lie about it either, but you know..."

Curiosity: piqued. "You can tell me. I won't judge."

"Okay." Elliot swallows, but he plucks a random stuffed animal off his floor, a blue bear with a hockey stick, and tugs at the loose strings on it. It looks ancient. "So, last year, when all this shit with Luke started happening, I was sort of... upset, I guess. Okay I got really upset. I snapped out a little."

"A little?"

He laughs once, but still won't look at me. "Okay, a lot. We were all drinking at Eric's place, and Luke was fucking with me, and I just had a meltdown. I started breaking things, freaking out—and I don't know, I barely remember it, honestly. But it wasn't cool."

Elliot screaming and yelling? I can't picture it. Like at all. But then again, when drinking is involved, things can get messy. Slater used to snap on me ten times worse than when he was sober; but he was rarely sober.

"You were drunk," I reason. "Shit happens."

"It was a pretty big deal, Lucy. Thank God no one got a video, but the entire school found out pretty fast. A lot of people didn't talk to me for months."

I get the sense he isn't giving me the full story. Either way, I find myself surprisingly sad for Elliot. Whatever actually happened with him and his friends seems to have done a number on him.

"Hey," I say, elbowing him. "It's better to be alone than with people who hurt you. It's a good thing you snapped at Luke because now you can probably see how shitty of a friend he was, anyway."

"It'd be easier to think like that if everyone else didn't see what happened. They all hate me for it too."

"Then fuck them."

He fidgets with the blue case of his phone. Maybe I don't get it. I was in high school for barely a year before Slater showed up, and I hated it. I hated elementary school, too. Being overly freckled, I always looked different from everyone else at school, and children are mean. It resulted in a lot of little boys getting their balls kicked in, which resulted in a lot of suspensions and behavioural therapy on my part. With everything going on at home, I didn't care what they said about me, but I wanted them to hurt for it. If I were in Elliot's shoes, I wouldn't feel bad about burning a few bridges with some high school bullies. But he has a sad look slapped across his face.

"Hey, sorry," I say. "I wasn't trying to upset you."

He smiles a little before he abruptly stands. "It's okay. Hey, come downstairs with me—there's something I want to give you."