Archive of Our Own

Allie knows all about Boys Like Dean.

They're beautiful. Always, always beautiful. Curly-haired cherubs with smiles like that, eyes like that, dimples on both sides, deep enough to swim in. They like kissing, they like girls, and they like kissing girls, but at the end of the day, that's all they're in it for.

She'd met her first Dean at 10 years old. It'd been her first time landing a major role in her school's yearly musical: Marian Paroo. Her Harold Hill is a little angel with wings, dark haired and green-eyed. They stage kiss because the teacher thinks 10 is too young for the real thing, but one day, behind the curtains, he kisses her. An innocent press of the lips. He doesn't stop after that, kissing her any moment they have where nobody can see. She giggles every time, and he grins.

Two weeks after the show ends, Allie walks in on him kissing Zaneeta's actress. It's on the opposite wing of the stage, perfectly symmetrical to where he'd been kissing Marian Paroo. Allie would never have known if she hadn't left her favorite jacket backstage, frantic fourteen days trying to find it. She cries all the way to pick-up, forgetting all about her jacket still hanging on a hook back stage, and runs into her mother's arms, sobbing with grief and furious at Zaneeta for taking what's hers. Her mother points across the lawn, Allie follows her finger, and she sees Zaneeta the same as her: crying into her mother's stomach, wetting her shirt.

That's the first lesson she learns about Boys Like That.

"Don't let them ruin you for the ones who'll love you for you," her mother says, fingers combing through her hair, eyes soft, and dropping her second lesson into her lap like a feather: "Never give up on love."

That's why when Allie taps the call button under the flashing red sirens and capitalized cautioning—DO NOT CALL—she tells herself she's not giving up on love.

She's just taking a hiatus.

—

Allie's got a track record. By the time she's a freshman at Briar U, it's five names long and started in seventh grade.

That's when her mom died.

Before that, she hasn't dealt with a boy since her Harold Hill, won't even think about it. Theatre is her calling, acting is her art. She loves it like she loves funfetti cake and both her parents, she'd reshape every cell of herself with a stage in it if she could. She's been this way since she could stand on both her feet, and she's known ever since that nobody's going to take this away from her. Nobody.

She's wary of any dimpled cupid that smiles at her, knows without err that Boys Like That will take her and crush her, and she's not looking for that. What she really wants, apart from EGOTing, is what her parents have: real love.

She wants the way her dad looks at her mom, wants the way they smile at each other in the mirror, in the car. She wants the way they text each other when she reads over their shoulders, how they tease and joke not just in words spoken aloud, but letter by letter.

They make each other laugh. They make each other smile. Their love is so real it's tangible.

Even the way they fight. No matter how it goes, tempers out or not, they come back together like magnets searching for their opposite pole. They choose each other every time. They never give up.

When they lose her mom, her dad is okay. He cries at the funeral—Allie's never seen her dad cry before—but that's all. He's there for Allie in everything, at everything, he never misses a show, a play, a musical. He takes her to vocal lessons. He celebrates her wins and losses. He's there for her when she can't be there for herself, when it's hard, when she misses mom. He's the perfect dad, the perfect parent, and he does it all while holding down his job.

When her dad thinks she's asleep, Allie creeps out of bed, treads silently to the stairs, and peers over the banister.

Her dad looks so alone.

—

It isn't until after her mother's first dialysis treatment that Allie thinks, "Is mom gonna die?"

She's watched her beautiful mother throw up from chemo, watched her hair fall out, her cheeks hollow in. She's still the most beautiful woman Allie's ever seen. She still loves her body, she tells Allie, because it's trying so hard to make her better. She'll always love her body, she says, and you should too, sweetheart. So Allie does.

She disappears into theatre. It's the only thing that empties her head. Filled with lines and cues and marks, her brain has nowhere to go but center stage, in front of an audience, where the pressure is so intense that the only thing Allie has room for under the spotlight is what's happening right then and there.

Off stage, though, her mom sleeps for hours. She slept an entire day once, and Allie had nearly lost herself in the panic, shaking her mother violently, heart pounding, when she didn't wake up the first, second, third fourth fifth gentle nudge. She had eventually, just too tired to lift her lids.

"Is mom gonna die?" she whispers from the back of the car when she and her dad are driving back from the hospital after visiting mom for the evening. Usually her dad answers immediately, always says "no." Today he takes a minute—Allie watches his knuckles bleed white around the steering wheel—then says, "No."

The first of all her mistakes shows up a coincidental week after she asks.

He's in her math class, he's always been in her math class, she's just never noticed him until today because she's never had a reason to. Their next assignment is being passed down each row of desks, and when the boy in front of her has the stack, Allie reaches over his shoulder expectantly, only for him to twist and look her in the eye.

He's got beach glass eyes and warm, curly hair. "Are you okay?" he asks.

She hasn't told anybody. She doesn't want to be the crying kid with a dying mom. But he asks her, and she feels something inside herself tilt sideways and crack.

"Yeah," she smiles. "What's your name again?"

He smiles back. He's got dimples.

That's how she meets Boyfriend Number One.

—

Allie's not surprised it's Dean she gravitates towards. The moment he'd grinned at her while chewing off some unknown girl's face, she'd caught the flash of a dimple and had nearly sighed, out loud and irritated.

She knows she has a type, recognized the pattern four boyfriends deep and had tried her fucking hardest to shake the habit. College was her restart, and she'd lucked out one week in: Sean's the first guy she's ever dated that's… normal. He's cute, but not too cute, the kind of cute that gets cuter the more time you spend with them, the kind of cute that gets overlooked. He's not going to knock anybody out with his smile, and Allie likes that. Needs that. She's had enough of concussive smiles. Seems like she'll always be a sucker for curly hair, but there are no divots in his cheeks when he grins, and his eyes don't make her want to suck in a breath, sink under the surf, and test how long her lungs will last.

It's a glass of water after a trek through the desert. It's shade on a sunny day. It's boring, but boring is good, she's read online. Reddit tells her she's addicted to the rollercoaster because it's all she's ever known, Google describes what an insecure attachment style is.

Boring is good, she reminds herself when she grabs Sean's hand to run out to the dance floor and he shakes his head. Boring is good, she remembers when she brings him to a spare bedroom at a house party and he insists they really shouldn't. Boring is good, she chants when he picks her up from Malone's and she giggles and kisses him and pulls him into the kitchen because she's the closer tonight, which means she's the last one there, but Sean pushes her away and says they can't.

Boring is good, boring is good, boring is good—"I can put a pillow under your butt. You said that felt good last time, right?"

"Yeah. Yeah, let's just do that."

Sean's the only guy she's ever dated that told her he liked her before she could tell him.

And the first time she breaks up with Sean and he takes her back, it feels miraculous, like the universe is finally rewarding her for everything she's been through up to that point. When she breaks up with him a second time and he takes her back again, she can't believe how fucking lucky she is, how much Sean loves her, and how much she loves him for that. The third time she breaks up with him, she's petrified she'll do it again and that it'll be the end of them—then she does it a fourth and a fifth time.

But this time, the sixth time, is different.

"This is a one time thing," she pants, and Dean sounds out a distracted agreement that wouldn't be assuring if she wasn't so preoccupied. "Tell no one," she gasps, smiling when she meets his eyes. She recognizes that look in his eyes, loves that look in his eyes. The familiarity of this, all of it, is so comforting.

She forgot just how much she fucking loves rollercoasters.

He's not even inside her yet and it's so good, the brief, burning flash of his mouth against her neck, his fingers digging into her thighs. When he grins back, the cavern behind her bellybutton—the one she's been desperately trying to fill since her third shot of vodka, the one that's been shrinking since she picked up her phone and called the number she wasn't supposed to call—sews itself shut. She doesn't know if it's because of Dean or if it's because the sinkhole is gone that it's so good, but she doesn't care.

It's good, and that's all that matters.

"I got it," Dean says, blue eyes flashing, fingers gentle on her chin. Butterflies swoop in her stomach; she bats them away. She knows better this time around.

—

The first time she kisses Boyfriend Number One is also the first time she tells him she likes him. They've been doing this thing, meeting each other after school, between classes, her laughing at his jokes, him smiling at her over his shoulder in math. They're beating around a bush and she knows it, so in the dressing rooms after her final show for the year, after she's wiped off all her stage makeup and changed out of her costume to meet him out back, she takes a deep breath and tells him, "I like you."

"Same," he says without missing a beat.

She's still a nervous little thing then, and her brain's knee-jerk reaction is to kiss him. Her hands reach out, shaking as she loops them around his neck, and she presses her lips to his.

That's it. She figures they're going out now.

There's a way, she learns, that boys look at you when they want something, and there's a way they look at you when they get it. She lives for both, the surge of adrenaline on the ride up and the dizzying drop after, the knowledge that she's doing this to them, that they want her. That she's wanted.

She's giddy for a month, two months, three. Then the doctor's tell her and her dad that mom's dialysis isn't working anymore. They'll have to try a different kind.

Boyfriend Number One is the first person she tells. The only person she tells. He already knows everything else, he'd asked her if she was okay, after all, so she'd told him the first time he'd walked her to the auditorium, alone because the school had emptied out ten minutes earlier. He'd stayed behind just for her, and her heart had skipped for it.

"I'm so sorry," he says. Allie smiles through her tears between library shelving. She kisses him, and when she wraps her arms around him, something inside her buttons up.

"I love you," she whispers into his neck. She's glad he's here. Sometimes he disappears on her. Not physically, but like he's not listening to her, doesn't see her. It terrifies her. She does everything she can to claw him back to her.

"Same," he says.

On a Thursday afternoon a week before the start of summer break, after the final bell rings and before she heads off to the buses, she hikes back to her English class to pick up the jacket she'd left behind. When she opens the door, a girl yanks away from the person she'd been leaning into and whips around to find the intruder, revealing her partner.

Boyfriend Number One stares back at Allie. Later he tells her, "You were just really depressing to be around."

—

She suspects Dean Di Laurentis is going to be trouble the moment he slips up behind her at his house party, when he brings his mouth close, wanting, and a familiar rush of adrenaline floods her. She confirms as much in the women's bathroom during karaoke, when he steps out of the other stall wearing a smudge of lipstick, a sad symptom of his unfortunate psyche. Allie stays optimistic despite her premonition because she's been two years clean and she doesn't do rollercoasters anymore. She does boring.

It's the moment before he picks the joint up off the coffee table that Allie knows he's going to be a problem. He stares at her and she lets him, meets his gaze for just as long—a bit too long—searchingly. Following him outside is the only viable next step.

His dimples show even when he isn't smiling. She can't stop staring at his mouth, watching both divots appear and disappear in the silence. She hopes it's just the alcohol making her pay so much attention.

"So you're breaking up with your boyfriend," Dean says suddenly, nonchalantly.

Allie falters. "What?" Her boyfriend. Sean. "I'm not breaking up with him," she replies haltingly.

"You want to though."

It's all she needs to hear to backslide into bad habits, spitting up her facts and hoping somebody else's fiction might fill in the pushpin pricks all over her. But Dean doesn't slip in a line or a smile. He asks a question, and it sinks her.

"Okay, so, what do you want, Allie?"

It's been a long time since anybody's asked her that. She's not sure anybody has in the last decade, honestly. The neat little square she's slotted Dean Di Laurentis into goes a bit hazy at the edges. Allie wonders why he cares.

She stares into the firepit. If she sits any closer, the fire burns so hot it hurts. If she sits any farther, her teeth chatter. It's felt that way since seventh grade.

She wants to be in love, she wants love, she loves love—and she's so afraid of it, too. Giving is the easy part, she can give and give and give, she's done it for Sean and for every boy before him. It's the bits that chip off her every time, the parts of her that she's had taken from her for giving so much, that scare her. She wants love, but she's terrified of what'll be left of her when it's gone, and she's paralyzed by the thought of what it might take from her.

What Sean's asked of her—she still can't wrap her mind around it. She's given everything to him, compromised so much, but this is the one thing she can't give up. She'll shed so many parts of her for his love, but not this. She can't. But she loves him so much—

She wants love, but she doesn't want to give anything up for it. She wants love, but she wants to stay whole while giving it. It's why she knows she needs to break up with Sean for good this time—but isn't love sacrifice? And compromise? Her parents fought, but at the end of the day, they found each other again. There's no such thing as "winning" in love.

So maybe Sean is right. Her aspirations will never take off, and if she lets him go now, she'll have nothing at all left when she fails on stage, too. Settling down is the logical, rational thing to do.

Logic doesn't stop the want, though.

"It's dumb," she murmurs, feeling it.

"Hell no," Dean says, uncharacteristically vehement. "That's not dumb. If that's what you want, go after it."

Allie is used to games. She knows the emotional lures and traps Boys Like Dean use to catch girls like her, so she says, smug but a little uneasy because Dean's not exactly what she expected, "Okay, which one of your exes taught you to be so insightful?"

The pause is weird. "I don't have any exes," he says, and Allie falters. "It's the weed."

"Wait, Dean Di Laurentis has never had a girlfriend?" She's genuinely astonished. She'd figured he'd have a couple of Allies in his archives, girls that are ready and willing to give everything, lay it all at his feet if that's what he wants. After all, she's dated so many Deans.

His edges grow hazier still. "I like being the casual sex guy," he says, and Allie wonders how much he means it. Maybe she's delusional, but she could swear there's a practised levity to it. "It's easy."

That's true. Her exes had always made it seem so effortless, drawing the knife and plunging it into her back. She loves love too much to have ever kept things casual, but maybe in another world, she's given up on breaking her own heart and living it simple. A Girl Dean. She has to stop herself from laughing out loud. She grins at him. "I have heard you're easy."

He stares back too long. Something stirs in her chest. She knows Boys Like Dean are a problem, but she remembers that she's a part of that problem, too.

"I'm a Six Flags, baby. Everybody wants a ride. They come for a good time, not a long time, and that's fine by me."

Allie searches his face, wondering if maybe Dean Di Laurentis is a little bit like her. If that's what you want, go after it—but, "Is it?"

The look they share is too long again. The thing in her chest blooms. Allie tamps it down. She knows better.

Later, when he hands back her phone with his number in it, she replaces his name for the hazard she knows he is and says, "Sorry, dude—

I don't do rollercoasters."

—

She meets Boyfriend Number Two two months after Boyfriend Number One. It's the last month of summer, she's signed up for a theatre intensive that ends right as school starts, and she's 13 now. The third day of class, she's made five new friends. A boy walks up to her when she's taking a breather alone outside the auditorium.

"You okay? You always look kinda sad."

Allie stares at him. Blond hair, brown eyes. This time, she won't tell him why she's sad.

"Yeah," she smiles. "I'm good! What was your name again?"

Dimples when he smiles.

—

anybody ever tell you you look cute in an apron?

Allie glances up. There's no loud, rowdy crowd of boys anywhere in the diner. She catches hectic reflections on the window, and there he is with the rest of his guys, flashing a smile at a girl with a bob and mile-long legs that's passing by while they wait for the rest of their party.

She rolls her eyes, biting back amusement. Not happening

what? I'm just letting you know
being friendly
neighborly

Okay Mister Rogers 🤡

Through glass, she sees him smile at his screen. She has to bite her tongue to fight back her own. When the bell chimes and they file in like disorderly lemmings, his gaze briefly meets hers. She looks away quickly, but not before the flint in her belly smolders red hot.

That's fine, makes sense, even. It's only been a day since the play, and it's clear to her now that she's been in want for a while now. Fires that big don't get put out overnight, especially when the flames know exactly where to lick.

what time do you get off?

One time thing, sir, lest you forget

woah
presumptuous much?

She's too surprised he knows that word to laugh.

a guy can't ask when his friend's shift is over?

Allie raises her brows and eyes him incredulously. He's still grinning. It's like gasoline.

Fine. Whatever. Sex isn't love, love isn't sex, and carnal pleasure is just carnal pleasure. The difference between one time or two is negligible—how does that saying go? "Once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, three times is a pattern."

It won't happen a third time.

I'm closing today, she sends back. That means she'll be here late, the latest, all her coworkers out long before she'll be out.

great, he replies.
see you then

She purses her lips, tucks her phone away, and pointedly does not look his way as she turns into the kitchen to pack up the next to-go order. Butterflies sift in her stomach.

—

"Holy shit," she yelps, giving a start when she flings the back door open and Dean's right there. She clutches her chest. "Oh my god, I knew you wanted me dead."

"What?" he says, reaching behind her, mouth twitching at the corners.

"For getting in the way of your threesome that night."

He laughs. Biting back her smile, she shoulders past him—god, he's his own brick wall—to get a good look at the trash and make sure nothing's getting into it. He follows after her, fingers whispering at her waist, taking a gentle tug at the tie of her apron. She doesn't stop him, feels a slip of a smile work its way up her face, actually.

He's so good at this.

Of course he is, she chastises herself. He sets a heavy hand on her hip and spins her around. "Somebody'll see," she murmurs against his mouth, smiling.

He smiles into her, too, then pulls away long enough to quip, "Not sure I care what a dumpster diver thinks of you and me."

Laughing, Allie presses her palm to his chest to ease him off. "Inside," she beckons, taking his wrist and leading the way.

He works his arm out of her hold with an easy pull, sliding his fingers over her hand instead. Allie, taken aback, looks over her shoulder. He's eyeing her up and down. "Fuck, you're so hot," he says.

Heat pipes up her veins, plumbing gone haywire. She turns away to get back inside. The first thing he does once the door shuts is spin her around.

He's on her faster than Sondheim on lyrics, leaves her breathless the same way. He can tell, she knows, because he smiles against her. She laughs—he's so full of himself—and he pulls away abruptly, eyes darting over her for an unnerving length of time. His expression is unreadable, lacks its usual calculated charm. It's ironically vulnerable in how closed off it is. Just as she's about to ask what's wrong, he comes back in, hands yanking her shirt out of her skirt as his mouth works hers.

It's a small thing, but it stuns her, scares her. She's never seen that look on any of her exes' faces, so she pretends she didn't see it on Dean.

Their clothes come off. He hikes her skirt up, pulls her underwear aside, and she has to bite her tongue, it's so hot. She's pitched against the ice machine, steel sheet cold against her chest but back warm as he ruts into her from behind. His breath burns against the nape of her neck. The way she wants him—this, the way she wants this, shoves everything else she wants into the back of her brain. The way she can tell he wants this turns the static technicolor.

For one second, her head bobs above water, and she remembers she has to get off the ride eventually. Better sooner than later, or this won't end well for her.

"Okay," she pants, even as the hot slide of him in and out of her spins her head loose. "This is the last time."

His laughter makes her smile, makes all of her light up. The trail he kisses down her spine sinks talons tight into something she's afraid to look closer at, so she won't. Guys Like Dean don't stick around, and Girls Like Allie don't wait for them to.

When she cums, the grip inside her gut doesn't loosen much.

—

Boyfriend Number Two breaks up with her at the start of winter break, right before Christmas. They'd made out in the changing rooms of the auditorium all summer long. He'd said at the end of the intensive that they'd meet up during school, but school is here and they haven't been able to meet much. She's allowed to take the subway wherever she wants as long as she keeps her location available to her dad, but Boyfriend Number Two's too busy. She fights the urge to ask him about it, doesn't want to be pushy, to be clingy, needy, annoying.

He's the overachieving type, 13 and already captain of the Chess club, the Math team, the basketball team, extracurriculars lined up until dinner every day, volunteering on Saturdays, church on Sundays. She shouldn't get in the way.

Sometimes when they text, he answers within seconds. Other times, he doesn't answer for days. It turns Allie around with anxiety, she's never sure what it means or where she stands. She doesn't know why it matters to her so much. None of her friends are like this.

On Christmas Eve, he texts her.

I think we should break up

"I think," like it's an opinion and he wants her input. Allie doesn't respond, just stares.

long distance probably wasn't a good idea

Allie blocks his number. A week later at the mall, she thinks she sees a familiar face in the reflection of a shop window. She doubles back.

Boyfriend Number Two, sitting at the lip of the mall fountain with a strawberry blonde. She giggles at something he says, and he kisses her.

—

Her mom dies shortly after the New Year, shortly before Allie turns 14.

Boyfriend Number Three is three weeks after. Dark black curls, dark blue eyes. Lopsided dimples. Cute. He lasts a surprising almost-two years: 8th grade and freshman year of high school. Allie never tells him about her mom, or that she'd picked him deliberately knowing they'd see each other every day. Even their apartment complexes are only a few blocks away from each other. They go to school together and come back together, backs of their hands brushing between stops.

She tells him she likes him on the train, barely loud enough to be heard over some passenger's boombox. Who even owns a boombox anymore?

"Me too," he says. Allie likes to think he flushes. She can't say for sure.

He breaks up with her when she finds out he's been kissing another girl between the times he's got her in the empty locker rooms, like she and this other girl are working in shifts for him. She's known for a month, actually, but pretends not to until somebody new comes along. There's no downtime between Boyfriend Three and Four, she leaps straight from one into the other. She doesn't waste time on tears that way—but she ends up crying over Three anyways, because two weeks into Boyfriend Number Four—tawny, green eyes, dimples—she learns Boyfriend Three had been kissing lots of other girls in the two years they'd been going out.

She pretends not to care at school. She cries at home when her dad's out.

Boyfriend Four meets her behind the school every day, he presses her into brick and English ivy, and it's just making out, but sometimes she feels him get hard against her, jutting into her hip. The only reason she knows about that kind of thing at all is because her dad—her poor dad—took it upon himself to educate her properly.

Sometimes Boyfriend Number Four takes her hand and guides her, and her lungs start to squeeze at the same time something dark pools in her stomach. Before she can touch, she slips her shaking hand out, away.

"Sorry," she murmurs, feeling like a bad girlfriend. "I don't…"

"That's okay," he says, eyes kind, and her heart slows, settles.

She doesn't tell Boyfriend Number Four she likes him for an entire year. It's the first time she ever stifles the urge for so long, swallowing it down like bitter poison. He never says it in those 12 months either, and sometimes it feels like she's going to lose her mind over it. When she finally does confess, she does it before Opening Night, sliding him a free ticket across his desk in homeroom.

He doesn't show up. She makes excuses for him. "I'm just not into theatre," he says when she asks him about it the next day.

Allie avoids him for two weeks, taking the hallways he doesn't take. On day 14, she leaves class halfway through to go to the bathroom. Outside, still in the empty corridor, she stumbles upon giggling and whispers. When she steps into the room, her shoes echo off the tile. The voices go quiet. Allie washes her hands, hears the sharp fizz of a zipper closing up that the owner obviously thinks her running faucet covers. She leaves.

More whispers drift out, disappear. One pair of shoes heads in one direction, the second, the opposite direction. Allie turns out of the corner she's waiting behind, eyes glued to her phone as she re-enters the bathroom like she hadn't just come out of it. As she passes the body coming near, she glances up. Their eyes meet, familiar hair, familiar eyes. She turns back to her screen.

Never give up on love, she tells herself as she sits on the toilet, silent and tired. Never give up on love, never give up on love, never give up on love.

—

Somebody knocks at her door. She opens it. Dean grins at her.

"How do you know where I live?" Allie asks, dumbfounded.

"One of my housemates happens to be your roommate's boyfriend"—he walks past her, head turning to take everything in—"I've stopped by a couple of times. This is cute. Very you. Very Wellsy, too."

They've got vinyls in clear frames hanging on the wall, suncatchers and dreamcatchers scattered around windows and dripping from bookshelves. Their fridge is all polaroids, her and Hannah, Dexter, and everybody else at practically every spot downtown. Allie thinks there'll be some new additions, soon. New friends. New people.

It's a cozy apartment. It's a happy place.

Dean glances at her with a gleam in his eye, mirth turning up the corners of his mouth. "Why're you here?" she hisses, like she's going to kick him out even though she's already shut the door behind him. "What if Hannah was here?" Hannah's not here because she's spending the night at Garrett's.

"Hannah stopped by the house. Sounded like she was staying the night."

Of course. "Did you need something? I'm memorizing lines right now."

"What, I can't just wanna hangout with a friend?"

She shoots him a very specific look, but it loses its punch with her thinly veiled amusement. His grin, already wide, somehow broadens. He tails her as she makes her way back to her room, pretending there hasn't been heat swimming under her skin since she opened the door.

Dean continues to examine her space, wandering over to her bookshelf. He barks out a laugh. "What is this?"

Ally comes up beside him, then groans when she sees what it is he's holding. He snickers as he flips through the calendar, turning it upside down every so often or tilting his head, narrowing his eyes. She's not ashamed of sex, but she feels guilty at how much the calendar reveals about her life before… this. Before Dean. It feels like evidence against Sean, when there's been no crime.

"That"—she plucks it out of his hand—"is none of your business." She replaces the empty space in his hands with her script. "Might as well make yourself useful as long as you're here."

He makes himself very useful, even if she's laughing every other line because of the stupid voices he puts on for each unique character. He makes himself very useful, too, when he's all the way inside her, groaning into her neck, breath hot and sticky below her ear while he cages her in on her desk, hips rolling.

She holds herself up on her palms, arms shaking. Eyes closed, she tips her head back to accommodate his journey down her throat, but with every thrust, she comes dangerously close to knocking herself out against the wall, which her desk is already rattling violently against. She gasps, lids flying apart when he tugs her up with an arm around her waist, crushes her front to his so they're skin to skin, safely away from any potential concussions.

He's watching her face, lids heavy, lips parted, looking lost. She doesn't know what it is or why, but a laugh slips past her lips. His rhythm stutters, his pupils dilate somehow larger. Her breath catches. Dean grins.

"What?" he asks.

"Nothing," she answers, breathless.

"C'mon, Allie Cat."

Her heart goes tight. "You're weirdly quiet during sex for somebody who flirts non-stop outside of it."

He chuckles, sounding winded. It makes her bite her lip. "Is this you telling me to talk more during sex?"

His grin goes slick. He's expecting her to quip back, she can just tell. When did he start thinking he knows her? She lifts a hand and presses a gentle thumb to his right dimple, sinking it in. Then she pulls it away and whispers, "I'd be okay with it."

His expression falters. She doesn't know why she said it, doesn't know what made her feel like she could. To prove a point? That's idiotic.

Dean holds her gaze, brows furrowing. Then he groans and shuts his eyes, burying his face in the crown of her head. "Next time," he answers, voice crack muffled against her hair.

When they cum, Dean pants against her skin, catching his breath. Allie stares at her ceiling, lungs starving, head leaden.

There's not going to be a next time. Heart thundering, she says, "This is definitely the last time."

He doesn't answer, but the hand he's got wrapped around her hip squeezes, digits digging in.

—

The music building and the theatre building occupy the same section of campus, sitting nearly side by side. Allie's usually in one or the other, and not just because she's meeting up with Hannah between classes, but because the private practice rooms in the music building are perfect for, well, practising. They have pianos in every single one—even if they're run down and slightly out of tune most of the time—and they're basically soundproof so long as you don't belt Aguilera or get overly enthusiastic with any of Beethoven's pieces.

where are you

Her brows knit. Theatre dept

nope

Bewildered, she replies on autopilot. I'm in the music building

what floor

What are you doing?

what do you think I'm doing
holy shit there are so many doors in this building
it's like Inception in here
that scene where Ariadne folds Paris on top of itself
what's your room number

I'm practising?

I just asked you 3 questions Allie Cat
are you gonna answer any of them?

Allie stares at the letters of her nickname, not sure what to make of it—but what is there to make of? It's just his silly name for her, typed out when he's never done that before, nine characters of meaningless effort. He doesn't rescind it or try to explain it away, doesn't mention it at all, so she won't either.

He probably texts every girl like this. He's certainly a very confident double texter. Triple, quadruple, quintuple texter, too. Dean Di Laurentis doesn't care if he comes off overly eager, probably because if it gets him sex, he is. And if it's anything else, he isn't.

473
Fourth floor

Two minutes later, there's a tap on the tiny window of the door. Heart cartwheeling, Allie opens up, biting her lip and smiling at the sight of him.

She doesn't mean to get so excited seeing him, she never means to, but it's practically Pavlovian now. The space between her thighs clenches, the echo between her ears goes quiet, and her blood gets thick. He makes her feel good, even when he's not between her legs, even when all he's doing is looking at her. Every part of her body loves it, loves him.

"I literally don't remember anything about Inception," she says.

His eyes spark. Allie bites her cheek, insides light. The door falls shuts behind him as he steps into her, hands coming to her hips. "Aren't you an actor or something?" he says. "Guess we're gonna have to do a rewatch."

She shouldn't, but she laughs, and his dimples come out in full force. When the sound of her winds down, he says, "Hey," voice soft, eyes softer.

She tastes her heart on her tongue. "Hey," she answers, weak.

"Got out of practice early," he murmurs, backing her into the upright piano, setting off a clash of keys.

"Wow, are you good at hockey or something?"

She doesn't know if he misses because she grins at the same time he does, or if he does it on purpose, but her breath hitches when he catches the corner of her mouth in his kiss. His fingers thread through her hair, drawing her into him. When he peels away, blue eyes meeting hers, he asks, "What are you doing here?"

"Just running lines for Scene Study."

"Alone?"

"Everybody's busy."

"You can literally ask me any time. You know that, right?"

She doesn't know how to respond. "You have practice."

He shrugs and leans forward, trapping her between his arms and the piano, forcing her into a seat. Another mess of notes plays out. "I can come over after. Or before. Just let me know where you are."

Allie searches his eyes, wondering if he hears what he's saying. "Sure," she says, knowing full well she's not going to. She's shouldn't, she's not supposed to, she can't.

The way he looks back at her, it's like he knows. He stops crowding her, falling back onto the bench instead. "You going to karaoke tonight?"

"I don't know—"

"You should."

She narrows her eyes at him, perplexed and a little suspicious. He grins, boyish and like he knows it, like he's trying to milk it. "You look good on a stage."

All of her goes so soft, even if it strikes an odd, eerie chord of déjà vu in her. It's almost embarrassing—she should be horrified, she was supposed to get off this ride ages ago—but her heart is beating too loud and her body's aching for a touch she's come to know too well.

She bites her tongue and glances out the narrow window. The hallways had been empty when she'd been looking for a room, hadn't run into a single soul. It'd taken her four floors to find an empty studio, everything below filled with busy musicians or preoccupied theatre kids. She looks back at Dean, only to scoff and roll her eyes at the new look on his face, cocky and like he knows what's happening next.

Unfortunately for her, he's right.

"This is the last time," she whispers as she climbs over him, blood singing when his hands take her in.

—

She loses her virginity to Boyfriend Number Five. It's a long story. The worst one, Allie often thinks. She's 16 the first time he smiles at her.

The summer before her junior year, she applies for a lifeguarding position at a nearby community pool. She gets the job. The day before the pool opens for the summer, all the new hires and existing hires group in the pool house for an orientation. Allie meets everybody, smiles, laughs, and then she meets him. She's struck speechless.

He's got wavy hair that she later learns curls harder once it hits chlorine. He's got dimples on both cheeks that show at the slightest provocation. He flirts with all the female lifeguards, he'd flirt with a rock given the opportunity, and he definitely flirts with her.

He's just like all the straight male leads she's played opposite to. He's just like every boy she's ever wanted. She's still getting over Boyfriend Number Four.

"You're quiet," he says one day while they're alone in the back, grabbing their rescue tubes for their shared shift. "I wasn't expecting you to be. You don't really look like the quiet type."

They've only known each other for a week, but she's been fielding his shallow—more even than the kiddy pool—advances for what feels like months. She avoids him, especially when she really wants to be around him. She's figured out by now that she's got a type, and it's fucking her over.

Every day, morning, afternoon, adult swim or not, he runs his mouth like he's trying to fuel rocketships to space, flung out so many words in so few minutes, yet this is the first thing he's said that hints at the possibility of depth.

She raises her eyebrows. "What do quiet girls look like?"

"I don't know," he shrugs. "But not like you. I think it's your eyes, or something."

Allie stares at him. He stares back, straight faced for once. "My ex just broke up with me," she says faintly, turning away, suddenly dizzy.

"Ah. Got it."

He's weird after that. He makes all the same jokes, uses all the same lines, but it's as if something has changed. Allie can't tell if it's him or her, but she starts laughing at his jokes, starts making her own, starts smiling when he's the one laughing because of what she's said.

By the end of summer, they're making out in the back room, behind the rack of rescue tubes. He kisses like he smiles: Sweet. Unserious. Like it's a game, and at first he's teaching her how to play, but Allie's a quick study. He talks while they're doing all this, makes her laugh against him.

It's fun. He's fun. Everything about him, with him, is so fun. In hindsight, she should've taken that as a warning.

At first she slaps bandaids over the hickeys. Eventually she learns how to cover them with makeup, has to do it so often she perfects the process, turns it into an art. She does not tell her dad, she doesn't tell anybody. It never goes past second base, and it's over on her last day of work, anyway.

On the first lunch period of her junior year, looking for her friend in the cafeteria, Allie stills. Lifeguard Guy is staring at her from a section overrun with seniors. After a beat, he grins, lopsided, one dimple deeper than the other. Allie smiles back in disbelief and spends the rest of her day like that, like she can't believe the way love always finds a way.

He's on the soccer team. They kiss under the bleachers when she's done with rehearsal and he's finished with practice, strands of still sweaty hair plastered to his forehead, his neck. Halfway into the semester, he makes her cum on his fingers, talks her through the whole thing until she's a wreck. Three days and a lot of googling later, she fumbles with his zipper, sinks shaking fingers under the waistband of his boxer briefs, and wraps one hand around him. Her breath hitches when he groans and swears into her ear.

They never put a name on it. It never feels like they need to—and it's sort of thrilling to keep a secret like this.

The night she has sex for the first time, it's after a game. They win. There's an afterparty, loud, cramped, and messy. He doesn't drink though, and neither does she. "Meet upstairs in 15?" he says, eyes bright.

Allie knows what's happening next.

She's cum alone before, all the time, actually, but this is more fun. He laughs with her through the whole thing, he's slow about it, never rushes her, checks in with her. There's something distinctly different about it compared to everything they've done before. She's on the pill for acne, but she only tells him the first part. He grins sharp and cums inside her.

"I love you," she says after, curled into him, head in the clouds. "Same," he answers.

She learns how much she loves sex. She doesn't cum every time, but that's fine. The way he smiles at her after, sleepy and satisfied, is enough.

When it gets colder, they migrate into the locker rooms, waiting until everybody's left. Sometimes he drags her into the shower, sometimes before she's thrown all her clothing off. Other times, he sinks into her while she's pressed up against cold aluminum, a lock digging into her hip. She never feels it though, never feels anything but the way he fills her.

It's like that all through her junior year. He's hers and she's his, even if they never say it, even if nobody knows it. Every so often, she works herself into a spiral over the secrecy, types up paragraphs trying to rationalize her anxiety about it to him, but deletes them when she's done. Most of the time, it's so good she doesn't know what she did to deserve this. It's torture when he's busy, when he doesn't answer her texts. He doesn't invite her to his senior prom—because she's a junior, which makes sense, even if she's disappointed—but he tells her all about it behind the bleachers.

He texts her when he's in college and she's still stuck home, a senior. He texts more often than he calls, but that makes sense. College is built on caffeine and all-nighters, after all. When he comes back for the holidays, they see each other wherever and whenever they can. Allie goes to prom stag, all her friends coupled up. They ask her how she doesn't have a date, and she just shrugs and grins. "Guess they're all afraid of getting upstaged."

He's home for her graduation, even though he doesn't come, and he's there for the summer. They facetime when she gets her college admissions, jumping and screaming when she opens the fat manilla envelope for Briar U and it starts with, "Welcome to Briar University!"

It's not the school Boyfriend Five is at, but, "They have the best theatre department in the state!" she'd explained when she'd been applying, and he'd grinned and said, "Then you should go. Bet you'd look good under a spotlight."

She hadn't known she could love him more, but she does then. He doesn't come home that summer because he's taking extra classes, doesn't text much because he's swamped, but he visits every so often, and every time she sees him, it's sunshine breaking through the clouds. All the dread, the worry that he's over her, bored of her, everything melts away. They meet wherever they can, whenever they can. Together.

God, she loves him.

One week into her freshman year at Briar U, she opens a waiting text from him: stop texting my fucking boyfriend, whore.

Later, crying in bed, she realizes sex doesn't mean anything, and that he'd never once said "I love you" first.

—

house is empty
everybody's gonna be out until morning

Where are they?

party crawl on greek row

And you're not with them?

come over

She frowns, brows creasing at his non-answer.

and bring Winston

It really is empty when she gets there, the quietest she thinks she's ever witnessed for this house. The crackle of the firepit when she'd smoked that joint with Dean had been louder.

But they fill the silence easily, effortlessly. They always fill every silence easily and effortlessly between the two of them. And sure, Allie can hold a conversation with just about anybody, but it's different with Dean. Sometimes it's like he knows what she's going to say before she says it, and sometimes it's like she knows what he's going to say before he says it. They've had entire exchanges built on things neither of them have said yet, laughing with every word out of their mouths, and every time, everything inside her warms, folds tight into itself like a hug.

It's the same in the tub tonight. The water is hot—the way she likes it even if Dean whines about it—but she can still tell where his arms wrap around her, because they burn hotter still, leaving behind invisible prints as they slip over her, trying to keep ahold while she writhes with hysterics.

It's so easy with him.

But when the doorknob rattles, all sound vacuums out the room. She sinks under in a frenzied splash, doesn't know what happens but hears the door shut in the uncanny silence water always creates. She resurfaces with a gasp, adrenaline—but not the good kind—coursing through her.

"That was absolutely the last time," she pants—but not the good kind—then wrenches her still vibrating, hot pink dildo out of Dean's hand.

Five minutes of tense, baited breaths pass. Her jaw aches with how hard she bites down. The house is decidedly quiet again, so Allie shoots out of the tub, bubbles sliding off her skin as she yanks a towel off the rack and wraps her shaking self into it. She doesn't bother wringing her hair out, booking it back to Dean's room dripping wet to get her stuff together.

"Al," Dean calls out from behind her, sounding rushed. "C'mon."

She jerks around to refute whatever he hasn't even said yet, only to balk. He's standing right behind her, towel around his waist, bright pink dildo still vibrating in one hand while he tries desperately not to laugh. "You forgot something."

She hates how easy she is, he is, they are. "I just had it!"

"You threw it back at me for your towel."

"I was panicking."

"Yeah. I was there."

She snatches Winston from him and whacks him in the chest with it. He laughs. "It's not funny!" She tries to scowl, but her mouth wobbles violently with poorly suppressed mirth. "That was way too close."

"It's fine, nobody's gonna figure it out."

"Dean. It's a hot pink dildo."

"And? This is sex-positive household, Allie Cat. We don't kink shame or assign colors to gender here. This is a safe space." He explains this to her like she still crawls on all fours.

She glares up at the ceiling like she's trying to take a hole out of it. "I miss when I didn't know you were smart. Just help me find my underwear."

He does, snickering while he does it. He's the one to dig it up, pulling it out from under one of the pillows, which should be embarrassing, but makes her laugh instead. Allie reaches for it mid-giggle, only for Dean to pull back. She tries again, and he does it again.

"Dean." She glowers. He grins and walks back until he hits the bed, coming to a seat, dangling the scrap from his pointer finger. Allie rolls her eyes and comes up to him, snagging it back and then hiking her leg up to get into it. Dean grabs her around the waist and sends her toppling into him.

"Dean!" She means to be angry with it, but it comes out pure glee instead. He's holding her like he was in the tub, except he's got his teeth against the curve of her neck. "Come on!"

Gasping for air between laughs, she squirms until she's got her back to his chest and can get her hands on his arms to wrest him off her. She's still in hysterics, struggling with his hold on her, when there's a sound downstairs.

Allie freezes. Dean doesn't notice. She strains to hear, but there's nothing, so maybe it was a fluke, maybe she imagined it. But she notices that his bedroom door is open, and not just open, but wide open, like this room has no secrets, but it does, and she knows that, and it's the stupidest mistake anybody could make.

"Dean," she whispers. His mouth works down her spine. "Dean," she repeats more urgently. He still doesn't respond, so she snaps, "Dean, stop it."

He pulls away, brows furrowed. "What's wrong?"

"We have to stop."

His hands come off her, he leans back. "Okay."

"No, I mean"—her voice cracks, and it's mortifying. She wiggles into the scrap of lace, gaze glued to the ground. If she meets his eye, she's going to cry, which is unnecessary and completely dramatic, but she knows it. She hates it, she doesn't know why it feels like this, but it just does. Once her underwear is on, she spins around, trying to locate her bra. "I mean all of this. This is the last time. We're done."

The earlier ease is gone. In its place is a thick, viscous silence. The flood of her blood through her body is so loud, it's all she can make out. It's like she's suffocating in sound.

"What are you doing for Thanksgiving?" Dean asks abruptly.

Baffled by the sudden nonsequitur and a little surprised he's not protesting, Allie can't help but look up, frowning. He's holding her bra out to her, face straight, expression that blank page again. "Visiting family," she says tentatively. "You?"

"Where's family?"

"New York."

Dean stares at her, features twisting gradually into what looks to her like confused astonishment. "You're from New York?"

"Yeah. Brooklyn. Why?"

She leans over to settle her chest into the cups of her bra. Dean tracks the movement with his eyes before flitting quickly back to her face. "I'm from New York," he says as she clips the band. "Basically."

"'Basically?'"

"Born and raised in Connecticut, but we've got a place on the Upper East Side."

Allie stutters. "Where?"

He purses his lips, very clearly trying not to look pleased. "Park Avenue."

"Oh my god," Allie breathes, incredulous. The tension drains out, and she could still cry, but now with relief. "You couldn't just be rich? You have to be old money, too?"

"I apologize on behalf of my great-great-great-grandfather."

"I wonder how many times we've passed in the subway." She tugs her clothes on, but they refuse to cooperate, friction of her still damp skin too difficult to overcome. "Or wait, do you have a chauffeur? Train's too pedestrian, right?" she teases, muffled through her shirt.

When her arm refuses to feed through the sleeve, she throws the whole thing off with an irritated grunt. Dean's already waiting with one of his shirts in hand, amused look on his face. She narrows her eyes at him and takes it.

"I'd know if I saw you on the train," he says.

She's likely imagining the note of softness. "Yeah," she laughs, now trying to find her missing skirt. "You'd probably hit on me and I'd blow you off."

"Nah," he answers, smooth and confident. "We'd be doing the same thing, but high school."

For a second, the backs of her eyes burn again and her throat closes up. She swallows once, twice, until the passageway relents. "Why are you asking about Thanksgiving?"

He hesitates. "I'm going back with a friend. You can hitch a ride with us."

Back at her place, the page to book her train ticket home is still open on her laptop, waiting for her to finish lamenting the cost before she can comfortably hit "submit." Dean's offer is tempting, but, "Your friend won't think it's weird?"

Her skirt is hiding under his dresser, the edge of it peeking out. Once she's got her hands on it, she pulls Dean's shirt over her head, hears him say with utmost affection and fondness, "He won't care. He's got a football for a brain."

Allie giggles under his garment. "Does that mean you've got a puck for a brain?"

"I plead the fifth," he chuckles. "We can pick you up from Malone's."

"That'd actually be really nice. Just don't park right out front."

His shirt falls over her easily, no sticking, no friction, because it's too big to cling. The hem hangs mid-thigh, so she goes about tying it shorter so she doesn't look like a sack of potatoes dressed in a trash bag. She glances up at him to make a glib comment about his being way too tall, he makes her neck hurt, does he know that? Only to find his eyes roaming her, dark and loaded.

Her heart leaps into her throat. It reminds her of block parties and waiting in line, of watching stupid boys kiss their pick ups like they've never eaten their entire lives. Some small, winged part of her comes to life. She stomps it down. Shame curls up in its place.

"Dean," she prompts warily. His gaze snaps to hers. "Not right out front. I'm working that shift with Hannah. She'll see."

"See what?" he replies, voice low. Allie stares. "See what, Allie?"

"Us."

"But we're done, right? This was the last time."

"Yeah," she stammers.

"So there's nothing to see."

"Nobody knows we know each other, it'd be weird if you were suddenly just"—she makes a vague gesture—"driving me places."

She thinks he sees his jaw tick, but if it really happened, it's gone now. "Got it."

It goes quiet again as she finally figures out the knot for his shirt. "There's a streetlight halfway down the block with the ugliest poster the world's ever seen on it," she says, trying to fill the black hole between them. "Like if a Pollock and a Picasso and a Lichtenstein had a baby. You'll know it when you see it."

She chances a glance up, and he's hiding a smile, but poorly. It's like a balm for her soul. Some of their normalcy returns, her limbs loosen, and she's able to grin at him. "Got it," he says.

Behind him, on his desk, is her bag. Beside it are his law textbooks, stacked higher than she last saw them. She grabs the rest of her things and spins out the door, but Dean keeps close. "I can let myself out," she says.

"Somebody's gotta lock up behind you. Don't want a Psycho situation on my hands."

"Don't you shower with the door open?"

"Are you spying on me now?"

She turns around, back to the door. "Dean Di Laurentis," she says, flat and dry.

"Allie Hayes," he answers, corner of his mouth lifting.

"Get over yourself."

"Never."

She rolls her eyes on the way out, heart fluttering, guilt growing.

—

Truthfully, she's never been single for longer than three months, and she's never been in a relationship for shorter than nine. Sean is her longest relationship ever by the time they break up for the sixth time, clocking in at almost three years.

From middle to high school, up to graduation, her friends call her a serial monogamist. Allie argues she just loves love, because isn't that the case? Is there anything better than knowing there's always going to be somebody who's there for her? Who knows everything about her, the good, the bad, the ugly, and chooses to stay? Buys her chapstick because she always loses hers, makes her blueberry and chocolate chip pancakes, knows exactly how to make her laugh, meets her eye across the room grinning?

And is there anything scarier than being alone?

—

Two weeks after that text—stop texting my fucking boyfriend, whore—in the middle of her study session with the guy she's been paired with for her mandatory language credit (French), he asks her, "Are you okay?"

Allie stares at him. She's never really taken a good look at him, but upon closer inspection, he's cute in a very lowkey kind of way. "Yeah," she says. "Why?"

He flushes. "You're usually so… enthusiastic about everything. Then you disappeared for a week, and now you're back, but you've been kinda down the whole time."

Her chest goes tight. Tears burn the back of her throat. It spills out of her in the private study room, and it's humiliating but relieving, too.

"I'm so sorry," she rasps through dwindling tears, mortified with herself. "I'm literally trauma dumping on you and I can't even remember your name."

"Sean," he says, hesitant smile ticking up one side of his face.

"I'm Allie."

"I know," he says. "You're a theatre major, right?"

Her heart flips.

—

If Sean asks, Allie tells. She keeps out the sordid details and never describes physicality, features, dimples and waves, leaves out the worst parts of everything. But he knows her mom died and that she's dated a handful of guys—not as mutual facts or anything. She tells him the first early on in their relationship. The second comes in bits and pieces.

Sean doesn't ask much. He has no idea how grateful she is for that.

He meets her dad, she meets his parents, some campus event for families. They meet at the dining halls all the time, they study together all the time. They schedule date nights regularly, they even have a bout where they schedule sex.

It's a little boring—but boring is supposed to be good.

Sean's the one to ask her out, to say "I like you" first, to say "I love you" first. Those fresh, new months, Allie is giddy with this new, different thing. Sean always texts back, always answers within a few hours. He's so available to her, as enthusiastic about her as she is about him. He has quirks that make her laugh, that she teases him for, and he teases her back.

Six months in, things cool. Just a little. Sean's a little predictable. Some of those quirks that used to be so cute annoy Allie a little. Just a little. He's a little snappy, too. But like her mom and dad, Allie tries not to let it faze her—until it finally does, and she explodes.

"It's like nothing I do is good enough!"

"When have I ever said that?!"

"You don't have to say it, I can tell! You get this look on your face!"

She breaks up with him. She's never broken up with anybody before. She calls 36 hours later, sobbing, three bags of Hot Cheetos deep and crashing out, begging him to take her back. He does.

The second time she picks a fight—at some point in the middle of her shouting, she realizes she doesn't even know what she's saying anymore, doesn't even remember what started this—Sean bangs out of her dorm room halfway through. All Allie's texts are read, but not replied to. 36 hours later, he finally picks up her 21st call, and she apologizes while gasping for breath between tears.

The third time, she's horrified. Who is she? Why is she like this? Her dad was with her mom every step of the way in that hospital, and she can't even keep the peace with her own fucking boyfriend? Who she loves? She barely has time to get angry, to binge, the fear that this'll be the last time fast-forwarding her stages of grief.

The fourth time is a turning point. It's Sean that picks the fight this time, and when it's over, Allie is so infuriated, she downloads Tinder and goes to town.

For a month, she meets three matches a week, always at Malone's. It's easiest. None of them ever go anywhere; most of them she can't even hold a conversation with, they're so self-absorbed. At the end of it all, despite that it was Sean this time to call it quits, Allie's the one blowing up his phone in tears.

She's never going to meet anybody better than Sean. She knows now.

Their fifth fight is her fault again. The minute Sean storms out, she pulls her phone out, downloads Tinder, and logs in again. She's got unread messages from previous matches from their fourth fight, guys she left hanging once Sean took her back. She scrolls through these past profiles, curious (while furious) to see if her then-matches are matches she'd make today.

As she scrolls, though, her curiosity dies tick by tick, volume turning down with each boy she re-assesses. Horror creeps in, swells up her throat. They've all got the same kind of hair and the same kind of eyes and the same kind of smile.

She deletes the app. She spirals for three days. Then she calls Sean, and he takes her back like always.

She tells herself the fifth time is the last time.

—

She doesn't expect Dean's friend to be Beau Maxwell. She's a bit starstruck by his association to one of the greatest people of all time, but only a bit. She'll save the whole big thing of it for his actual sister—if she ever gets the chance. But it's incredible that by sheer luck of the draw, it's only one degree of separation now.

Allie realizes mid-lyric that Beau is also a Boy Like That. In a Renaissance painting, Beau and Dean are symmetrical cherubs pointing arrows at their next victims.

It's getting harder and harder to remember that boys like these smile the way they do at everybody, every girl, text all their hookups the way Dean texts her. She finds herself forgetting more and more that Dean is Like That, finds that the category she'd slotted him into, clean and crisp, has gone completely blurry at the edges.

She doesn't think "Guys Like Dean," anymore. She just thinks "Dean."

But it's different this time. Right? She knows the rules. She can get off whenever she wants. This is just a ride.

He smiles at her in the rearview. She smiles back. It's so easy. (Too easy.)

When she hops out of the car and lugs her bag over her shoulder, she throws a wave at the disappearing silhouette. friday seems really far away

Everything in her sinks and floats at the same time.

—

The way he looks at her when he opens the door—like he didn't think she'd actually show up, like he can't believe she's actually here—unclips a feathery thing from its leash in her chest. Makes her nervous.

"Hey," he says.

She traces his smile for a fleeting moment, then holds up her gift, the perfect guest. "Happy Thanksgiving!"

He laughs. "Cute."

"Yeah." She doesn't know why she says it, why it comes out of her so automatically, but it does, and she can't take it back. "My dad gets me one every year."

She's never told Sean that. Because she's never given Sean one.

She shakes the realization out, rationalizes that she'd needed to bring a host gift and it was the only appropriate thing she'd had. Thankfully, she isn't given much time to dwell on it because holy shit, she'd known he was rich, but not like this. Is this eat-the-rich levels of wealth?

Her head spins as she takes everything in. She gives pause at the sight of two wine glasses on the kitchen island. A confused, complicated thing sprouts up inside her. She aims for levity when she says, "You said this wasn't a date."

"It's not," he says, so sure of himself.

She's not so sure, though. "Feels like a date," she replies haltingly.

"It's not," he smiles. "It's a good bottle of wine my parents won't miss."

It's in the way he says it, sleek, practised, like he's rehearsed this. Her guard goes up, and it stays up. When he points out the painting that's hanging as a stand-in for his family's Basquiat, he all but confirms her suspicions.

"Okay," she says, peering down at him. There's no reason to point out a Basquiat, no need to name designer vintage. There's no need to peacock, unless he's got some sort of goal in mind. "Let's see it."

It is a date—but it's one he's taken a lot of girls on. Allie can picture perfectly a high school Dean getting off the R-train with a girl draped over him, can see him bringing her up here, rounding the same corners, strutting the same paths, giving her the same song and dance. She can imagine the showstopper, probably something cheesy, something that hints at emotional depth, vulnerability, something that says, "I could know everything about you if you let me," and she can imagine it working.

It would've worked on her four years ago.

"What?" he asks, brows knitting.

"Your big move. Grand finale."

His honest cluelessness turns pretend. He answers too fast, too casual. "I don't know what you're talking about."

Dean Di Laurentis has never had a girlfriend, but Allie's pretty sure plenty of girls have thought he was their boyfriend.

"Fine," he says, disgruntled.

He looks genuinely frustrated that she's figured out his ploy. She should probably feel flattered that he likes fucking her so much, enough to try to bait her into another "last time," but instead, a tiny little thing inside her wilts.

"There's a piano in the den."

He says more and she responds, but for those few seconds of exchange, she watches it like a movie playing in the back of her head as he describes it: high school Dean leading high school Allie down to the den, plucking out Mad World—which is only embarrassing because she knows better now—while she sits on the bench beside him, falling for it like the first leaf in autumn. Would they fuck on the piano like they did that time in the practice studio, or would he take her to his bedroom?

It's funny, she thinks, that he tried this on her, that he thought it would work. She wonders what it is about her, what parts of her he's seeing, that still scream that girl from before. And maybe he's right. Maybe she still has some teenage-Allie left in her, because she'd said "last time" every time until the next last time.

Knowing now what he thinks of her, she sidesteps the ceremony. "Can you be normal? It's just me."

"I am being normal," he answers. She's never seen him so unsure of himself.

"No, you're not." If this isn't going to end in sex, what would he be doing otherwise? If she leaves tonight with all her clothes on, what would they be doing in lieu of their usual itinerary?

"What would you be doing if I wasn't here?"

He's contemplative for a minute, eyes only finding hers at the last second before he spins and starts heading down the stairs.

Allie scampers to keep up. "What was that?!"

"What was what?"

"You almost left me behind!"

"You're not here, right?"

"Oh my god," she groans.

He laughs. "You ever played chess?"

Allie reels. It's the last place she expects information like this to be relevant. "Yeah. Why?"

Dean stops suddenly in his tracks and turns to face her. He looks confused. "You've played chess?"

"Why would you ask if you've already decided on an answer? Also, rude. I'll have you know I'm sort of okay at chess."

Dean snorts. "'Sort of okay.'"

"Yeah, I know what the horse does."

"The knight?"

"Congratulations, you've passed my test. Why are you asking?"

"How do you know how to play?"

The question she's been trying to avoid. She shrugs, taking a sip out of her glass to occupy herself. He doesn't let it go though, waits like she did when she'd cornered him about his grand finale. "One of my exes taught me," she finally confesses, then shrugs again, walking past him.

"One of your exes?" Like he can't fathom her having had a relationship before him.

Sean. Not him. Sean. Any relationships before Sean.

"Yeah. He was captain of the chess club."

"Holy shit. I need time to digest this."

"Digest what?" she laughs.

"Allie lore." He's smiling as he rifles through a cabinet. "Tell me more."

Her lungs seize up. Whatever he's looking for, it's not there, so he moves onto another cabinet. "There's nothing more to tell."

He shoots her a skeptical—and entertained—look. "Don't bullshit a bullshitter, Allie Cat. Especially not a better one."

After a beat, she sighs. "Fine." She ticks off her fingers as she lists off a part of her past. "He was my ex, captain of the chess club, math team, basketball team…" she trails off, running a finger around the rim of her glass, staring into the liquid. "That's it."

"Into overachievers, huh?"

He smiles toothily, suggestively at her. She rolls her eyes. "Trust me, your achievements, over or otherwise, have nothing to do with why I'm into you."

Too late, she realizes what she's said. Her gaze darts to Dean, only to dart away when she finds him looking at her. He's wearing that indecipherable look again.

The empty space between them drips.

"So why are you into me?" Dean asks, tapping at the glass.

Her eyes snap back to him. He's all grins. Biting her lip, she shakes her head. "I have no idea." She knows exactly why.

"You're such a shit liar. Aren't you supposed to be an actress or something?"

"Acting and lying are not the same thing."

"How many people have you slept with?"

She reels back at the bomb. "What?"

He raises his brows, smile sly. "How many?"

"I mean"—she waves her free hand—"three."

His stare turns scrupulous. "Me, Sean, and chess club captain."

"Yeah."

"You've gotta give up on the lying, Al, it's not doing anything for you. Who's the third guy?"

Allie blinks at him, thrown sideways by the comfortable casualness he throws her nickname out at her. It almost feels like he hasn't been dicking her down for nearly a month now, like they're two friends who have never seen every inch of bare skin on the other. Allie realizes belatedly that he's got three names to call her by, but she's only got two, and one of them she hasn't used since that night in the bar bathroom, when he'd had lipstick across his mouth like a warning sign.

"Just some guy before Sean," she says quickly when she realizes how long she's been quiet for.

"'Some guy.' Elaborate."

"Why are you so interested?" she laughs, puzzled and off-kilter.

"I like knowing you."

Her heart stutters. He's peering up at her from his crouch, one arm hanging off the cabinet door. She looks away from him, chewing her tongue. "He was a lifeguard," she finally says. "I was, too. That's how we met. I got a job as a lifeguard before my junior year."

She's never even told Sean this much.

"Hot," Dean says approvingly, grinning when she gives him an exasperated look. His attention catches on something in the cabinet, and, distracted, he asks, "Any other exes? Don't lie."

"Just a couple."

"A couple? Allie Hayes," he exclaims as he pulls out a large, lacquered box. "Were you a player?"

Maybe there's another version of her out there that would have laughed, but hearing it said out loud, and by the biggest player in likely the entire tri-state area, stuns her. A strange little sound scrapes out of her, not quite a giggle, not quite a gasp. "I—I dated all of them, I never…" Two-timed, lied, said anything I didn't mean.

She's never hurt anyone. She could never do that to somebody, not the way it's been done to her. Her gut twists.

"I like being in a relationship. You probably don't get that though, huh?" she teases, sounding strained to her own ears.

Dean stands, startling her out of her stressed stupor. The wooden case in his hands has got a checkerboard pattern on it, and Allie understands then why he'd asked. The only unbelievable thing left is how that question turned into this.

She looks up at him, and he's not laughing or smiling or grinning. He's observing. She looks away. There's a beat.

"So what do all these guys have in common?" he asks, faux-innocent, impish glint in his eyes. "Or am I gonna have to win the answer out of you?"

Just like that, she's out of her head. He makes it so easy. "Definitely the second," she quips, following him as he guides her back to the living room, sits instinctively on the bench like he does. "You might as well forfeit now."

"Fighting words," he taunts.

Smiling, she watches him set the board up. She helps by grabbing the white pieces—so she can go first. Dean glances at her with a knowing look, corner of his mouth quirking.

Even their silence is easy. Allie watches him think, inspects the line that forms between his brows. He chews the inside of his cheek, purses his lips. It's obvious he's good; he's actually deliberating his moves. She's just running on instinct. She knows how the pieces move, she knows the rules, and that's about it.

It strikes her suddenly. "You play chess by yourself?"

"I had to get better than Summer. She's a chaos monster."

He talks. They talk. She listens to him paint a portrait of his family, revels in the way the city lights dye his fondness in rainbow overtones.

"I'm sorry you can't be with your family now," she says gently. "Seems like you miss them."

His gaze moves over her face. Her heart catches. "I get to be here with you," he says simply, and she stares. "Also—"

The clink of their pieces draws her attention down. She groans, rolls her eyes, and whines out a long "come on," but there's really only one thought stamped across the inky space inside her head: I like knowing you, too.

—

The guys call. She tells him to take it, not thinking anything of it. But when he pulls an effortless excuse right out of his pocket, it rolls over her like a tidal wave.

The more "last times" they have, the more exponential her unease grows. He can make her cum on his tongue over and over again like that one time in her room, Hannah and Garrett watching a movie on the other side and kicking over popcorn, inadvertently sending Allie into the hardest orgasm of her life; he can meet her in the bathroom of a house party, lock the door and fuck her to within an inch of her life; he can get her off in any which way, in every way, until her limbs are liquid and she forgets what life even is—

and the dense fog will always creep up in the aftermath.

The fear, the guilt, the burn in the back of her eyes. It's never there from the outset. He texts, and she's so giddy, even her fingertips smile as she taps back. Before anything happens, nothing's happened. They're just talking. And plenty of people text, talk, tease. She and Dean are no different, touring his house, drinking wine, trading chess pieces—

She can still believe that last time really was the last time.

In the minutes before first touch—before he slides a hand behind her head, mouths a hot stripe over her collarbone and traces searing trails down her waist, her hips, her thighs, leaving behind his fingerprints like she's a crime scene and he's trying to get caught—she can imagine there's nothing between them but friendly words. He's just her best friend's boyfriend's teammate, friend, roommate, and she's just some girl who occasionally stops by his house to do nothing but hangout just because her best friend says, "Why not?"

And during the act, when they're flush against each other somewhere or other but still trying to get closer, air between their bodies burning, it's like being on stage: nothing matters but what's happening then and there. It's impossible to feel anything but good, to think anything other than "more."

It's the soft, quiet stillness long after the comedown. When she's alone again. When the oxytocin's finally wearing down and her laughter's long trailed off, staccato heart slowed to a dirge, short breaths stretched long again. It's after he climbs out her window, after she climbs out his, after she slips out of the bathroom and he follows 15 minutes later.

When there's nobody else around, it crushes her.

"This was supposed to be a one time thing," she says, undone.

She says more, but she's not here. Her voice rattles in her head but all she can think about is how Hannah and Garrett have just gotten together, how much they love each other, but if anybody finds out about Dean—about her, because nobody's going to question why Dean did it, but her? God, everybody is going to ask. Her best friend deserves more than 15 minutes of fame, of peace, but if Tucker walks into Dean's room with his wide open door, if Hannah knocks at the perfectly wrong time, the whole fucking world is going to flip over and fracture. Everybody will ask her why, and she won't have an answer because she doesn't know why, either.

She doesn't know why she seeks out Boys Like Dean. She doesn't know why she thinks she can fix them and make them want her, as if slaving for their loyalty and their love makes it more meaningful. She doesn't know what it is that makes her dive into relationships before she's even come up for breath from the last one.

"I called you, what, 36 hours after I broke up with him? That's less than 48. Oh my god, I fucked you less than 48 hours after breaking up with Sean."

"We had fun, we were safe, we didn't hurt anyone," Dean answers, like he has to get the words out.

"Yeah"—thinking of Hannah, of Garrett, of Sean—"So let's keep it that way."

"Allie, come on."

—a tiny part thinking of herself.

—

She's muttering lines under her breath, boots clicking against hardwood as she paces from one end of the auditorium to the other when her phone buzzes. Her scene partners are upstage rehearsing a separate scene they have together.

free chikfila on the quad
god I love christians
God*, I love christians
love the gays too

They haven't spoken in person since New York. He's texted her, but she's slower to respond these days—not that that's stopped him.

Allie chews her lip, trying to figure out the best course of action here. Despite everything she'd said that night, her heart still races when her phone pings, still tumbles when it's him. She reads every word and sees exactly the expression he'd make if he were saying it in person.

When did she start knowing him like this?

Enjoy your homophobic chicken biscuit, she taps back. Three dots follow immediately after, as if he's sitting there staring at his phone the way she is right now.

I'm trying
the guilt's unreal

There's a pause like they both know this conversation can end there. But his three dots bounce back to life.

you coming or not

Nope

His dots appear. Disappear. Appear again. He finally commits:

🤡

As far as Allie's concerned, that's the real end of this conversation. She sets her phone down, only for it to vibrate at the last second, like Dean's detected the loss of her attention.

It's a photo of him and Beau stuffing their faces. His dimples are out, explicit, it's honestly pornographic. There are crumbs on the corners of both their mouths. Allie could swear they were brothers in another life.

You're sooooo thoughtful, she taps back.

I know, right?
when are you done

She takes apart his question word by word, letter by letter. She can slip her phone into her back pocket and go back to practice, pretend she didn't see it. She can put her phone on silent and do something else. Anything else.

10 min, I think?
My scene partners want to run thru it one more time

Ten minutes later, she leaves. When she steps out of the auditorium, she catches a glint off the bench immediately across from the doors. She comes closer to inspect.

It's a thing wrapped in foil. A chicken biscuit. She picks it up—still warm—and peels back the paper. At the smell of it, she realizes there is no demarcation between her guilt and her glee.

They are one and the same.

—

Malone's is a different place tonight. They'd closed shop for two hours to decorate, and now there's not an inch of space that isn't glitzing or glittering. The ceiling's invisible, it's a sea of shiny tinsel and foiled stars overhead, and the usually warm, fluorescent interior is cool blue.

On any normal day when the diner swaps to a bar after the dinner shift, it's a packed and noisy place. Drinks still, floors and seats get sticky. Somebody inevitably spews in the bathroom, which means Allie and all the other employees settle on who's cleaning it with rock-paper-scissors, best three out of five.

Tonight's two times the usual crowd, and the A/Cs ratcheted down to an all-time low.

Allie's not waiting for anybody in particular to show up, but when Dean walks in, solo cup already in hand, their eyes find each other. He's looking at her like he knows she's been deliberately ignoring his texts since the chicken biscuit. She looks at him like he knows why.

It's no surprise to Allie that he's been appointed the MC. She doesn't mean to watch, doesn't want to watch—there are people waiting for their drinks—but she does. Under the stage lights, the shapes of him become sharper, shadows casting in hard angles. It strikes her that she knows what he looks like naked.

And then it strikes her that so do the majority of the girls in this room. The ones who don't, will, sooner or soonest.

Allie gets back to filling pitchers. Five minutes later, Dean leans into the counter, dropping the pretext. "So what'd you think?"

She thinks he's ridiculous. She thinks he's having a little too much fun baiting her back into his bed—or anywhere on campus, really. The bathroom, in this case. She thinks he's a bad idea that keeps getting worse, and they really, really need to stop.

"—I'm not that kind of girl," she says.

"But you wanna be," he answers.

Allie tries to read him for a pause, wondering if that's what he thinks of her, or if it's what he wants from her. When she turns away to grab the two pitchers Garrett ordered earlier, she wonders if that's what she wants to be, or if it's what she wishes she were.

"For the record, I am not delusional"—he grabs both pitchers and comes in close enough for Allie to make out the patterns in his eyes, even in the dim lighting—"I just know what I want."

"Go," she replies, heart beating on her tongue.

He leaves, but not before laying a look on her she can't parse. At his table, he says something to Garrett, looks serious about it. She's staring again, hovering even though she doesn't want to. A group of girls stops by their table, joins them in their seats, and Allie remembers Dean doesn't mean he wants her.

He wants sex.

She knows that. It's absurd she forgot to begin with, considering it's also what she wants, why she called him that night after the show. Chest tight, throat closing, she tears her attention off Dean long enough to scan the QR for song requests. Hannah slides up at that moment. "That really doesn't bother you?" Allie asks.

Maybe she just wants somebody to tell her what she's doing—what they're doing—is fine. A second opinion from somebody who isn't Dean, because Dean is never going to say "no" to this. Or maybe she just wants somebody to tell her what to do.

She has no fucking idea what she wants.

"If you really want a fling, I think you should go for it," Hannah says, stealing her attention from Dean.

Allie searches her best friend's gaze. Hannah's the only person who knows her the way she knows herself. Hannah's the only person who knows how she feels about Sean, why she feels it and why it matters to her, what it has to do with her parents. Hannah's opinion is the only one she can trust—

"Just pick someone who will never catch feelings for you. Someone down for anything. Someone who has zero expectations, who just wants sex."

—even if Allie's never given her all the details.

—

"Tell me what you want."

She's changed her mind. She keeps changing her mind. She thinks she doesn't want this anymore and then he says he knows what he wants, and she changes her mind. She sees him surrounded by girls and remembers who he is—what he is—and changes her mind. She scans the QR code to set her decision in stone, then her best friend tells her to do the very thing she's been doing, and she wavers, but gets on the dance floor anyway and convinces herself she's doing the right thing. She calls him to tell him that.

He tells her he doesn't want just any girl.

But Boys Like Dean say pretty things. Allie knows that because she knows Boys Like Dean.

What she'd meant to do when she'd stepped into the photo booth was tell him they were done. For real. Last time was The Last Time. The words had been there in her chest, lungs clutched tight around them, every part of her locked and loaded and waiting for the moment the curtain fell behind her to shoot.

And then he'd looked at her like that.

The same way he'd looked at her on Thanksgiving, opening the door and seeing her there. In a single glance, all the words leave her.

"Allie Cat," he says in tones she could swear were made just for her, and her heart trips. "Tell me what you want."

She wants to know that she's going to come out of this alive and intact. She wants to know that when this is over, she'll still have wax on her wings. She wants to know that she's not the girl she used to be, that that girl hasn't been sitting on her shoulder all this time, whispering into her ear.

"This is not a relationship, okay?" Because she knows Boys Like Dean, and she knows what happens at the end. "No strings, no feelings, just sex."

"Just fucking kiss me."

So she does, because kissing him is the only thing that makes sense anymore.

—

It's not a relationship.

The pace is slower, he holds her closer. After she pulls his sunglasses off, he watches her like he's trying to commit her to memory, kisses her like he's trying to stamp the feel of her mouth into his own.

It's not a relationship.

He lingers after they finish, draped over her, warmer than she remembers him being. She can feel his heartbeat against her back.

Then Hannah texts, and Allie realizes she's sunk into a familiarity that this isn't, with somebody who doesn't want that. It's a flurry of limbs and clothing and he tells her she looks so good for no reason at all and she puts his sunglasses back over his head and for a second, when his eyes disappear behind the dark frames but she can still see him looking at her like that, there's no rush or panic. Kissing him is as natural as taking her next breath, and he meets her there like he's sinking with her, back into that dangerous, pillowy comfort.

The echo of a memory comes forward, her parents together under dim kitchen lighting, smiling at each other. It fades back into the shadows before she can grab it. Dean chases her for another, Allie almost relents, but she can't see his eyes anymore, and this is not a relationship.

"Go!"

He goes.

—

"Wow," says Sean, and Allie's heartbeat is loud and fast for all the wrong reasons now. "You really can't be alone, can you?"

She tells him the truth because it is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. She can be alone, it's not a relationship, it's not anything, and the words leave a bitter, acrid aftertaste—she doesn't know who of the two of them it's for—when they leap from her tongue: "It wasn't like that."

When Sean leaves, his accusation is still ringing in her ears. Something inside her cracks along a hairline.

—

"Bitch," Joanna Maxwell says. "You're in another relationship."

The cracked thing splits wide open.

—

He's got dimples that he doesn't smile wide enough to show and hair with no wave in it. He's got a name she's only going to remember because of how ridiculous a fake it is. He calls her a shit liar, and she hears it in another boy's voice.

She doesn't know who he is, she might not even remember this night this time next year. He doesn't know who she is, and the odds of them running into each other are minuscule. This time, it really will be a one time thing. Nobody will get hurt, because it really won't be anything. It really will be nothing.

He kisses her, and it's amazing. He kisses her, and everything inside her lights up. But when she opens her eyes and it's the wrong shade of blue, her heart judders. The heat remains, but the hope dies out.

"I am she," Allie fawns later to Jo, putting her whole self into it, "she is me."

"You have to admit: you had fun."

It was. She did. Allie says nothing, just laughs, hoping that faking it will make it stop feeling like something she needs to apologize for.

—

"No," Allie retaliates, too fast, too urgent, but her mouth won't stop moving. "A fling is like a mini relationship. It's like a gateway drug. I am through with all that."

Hannah goes to bed and Allie's phone vibrates. She scans his texts, messages that read like she's one in a pair of people who love each other and need each other for more than just sex.

Guilt and dread sweep in like a storm.

She climbs through his window and he catches her, all dimples. For a breath or two, the only thing she sees is that sea of sky, and it's easy again.

There's a sharp pang in her chest. "Are you okay?" he asks.

"Yeah, I, um—"

When did she start associating their ease with pain? At what point between being strangers and being—this, did his smile start feeling like an indictment? She hasn't done anything they didn't say they could do. This isn't a relationship.

A stone sets up in her throat. She can't swallow past it, can't look him in the eye. He steps into her, and the warmth she's grown so used to radiates off him. Her heart wavers.

She's hardly in her body anymore. Her hands come to his shoulders, guide him back onto the bed. "I'm fine," she starts haltingly. "Just need you to sit."

Why does this feel like a breakup? She's never known one like this, so how can she know that that's what this feels like? Before Sean, she'd never been that girl, the one who figures out first that somebody is bad for her. With Sean, breaking up had always been a storm and a sickness.

This one is Dean looking at her with the same emotion turning in her stomach.

She rips off the bandaid. "We need to sleep with other people."

"We've always said we can sleep with other people."

"Right, of course, you're Six Flags," and she's an idiot because she'd forgotten that, and now she's teetering dangerously before the drop. "But when's the last time someone other than me actually got on this particular rollercoaster?"

He has to search his mind. "Shit," he says, like it's a bad thing.

Which it is. She agrees. It doesn't hurt. Her hearts not in her throat and her eyes aren't tight. They need to sleep with other people because this isn't a relationship, it can't be a relationship, and she doesn't want it to be a relationship.

"Just have sex with someone!" she exclaims, blood scraping her veins clean out. "Are you in or are you out, Di Laurentis?"

She could almost beg: Be who you are, be who I think you are, be who I've expected you to be this whole time. Lower these stakes so that she can come out of this with all of her left. Before it's too late.

"I'm in, Allie Cat. I am so in."

The relief is so visceral, she could cry. It's not for any other reason. The heat climbing up her face, trying to press out of her eyes is for this newfound freedom, nothing else. She doesn't need to feel guilty anymore—she ignores that she still does—she doesn't need to wonder what this is anymore—ignores the stinging ping his enthusiastic consent elicits—she doesn't need to worry about how this will end—

Because Dean Di Laurentis is still the kind of boy Allie knows all about.

He comes in close, and she can't do it. It'd be a bad way to start out, she reasons. "Okay, bye," she says, voice weak, wobbling.

"So we're not—"

"Just text me when it's done."

At home, she stares at her screen, at their messages. She silences and unsilences her phone.

She's not praying. She's just reminding herself what reality is.

—

It's late when she gets his call.

She's probably putting all her clothes back on while he's waiting for her to pick up. Maybe she's right next to him, still naked. She could be leaving right now—taking the stairs, not out his window, because she doesn't have to, doesn't need to. Or maybe they're taking a break before round two.

Allie looks up and finds a familiar face. It's laughably miraculous.

The sex is good. The sex is great, even. She's glad she still likes sex—not that there's any reason she wouldn't. Of course not. Sex is just sex, regardless of who it is.

Later, when she's catching her breath, she notices her guilt is a lighter thing. Anything heavier, she ignores.

—

She orders three shots of tequila, and his hand on her hip is a brand hotter than any liquor down her throat.

"Hey."

"Hey."

It's not uncomfortable, there's no reason for it to be uncomfortable. If she's uncomfortable, it's all in her head. All they've done is sleep with other people. Like they said they would. Like they always meant to.

"You did a nice thing."

The tension bleeds out, and they're easy again. "What?"

"Getting them back together."

"No, they got themselves back together."

"With help from you"—he shoots her an expectant look, and she smiles—"And me. You're welcome."

She laughs. When he doesn't laugh with her, something inside her skews sidelong, and suddenly, she's uneasy again.

"I get it now. You love love."

The light in his eyes is the same cut and color as the one he'd had over scattered chess pieces and empty wine glasses. Allie sees the shades and the shine from the city lights like they're still sitting by that window.

But they're not. And she doesn't know why he's looking at her like that.

"That's what you said you wanted, right? That night at the firepit? So I came here to tell you that, uh"—and he looks like that moment when she'd told him to be normal—"I didn't complete the assignment."

"What?" He'd called her though. He's Dean Di Laurentis, and he'd called her like she'd told him to. The laughter bubbles up her throat, because she doesn't know what else this could be but a joke. "Why?"

"Because I like you."

—

There's one other boy. He's not on her list, because he doesn't count. He can't.

She's 13 and caught on the cusp of being a kid but not quite feeling like one anymore. That could be because middle school is turning a corner. She'll be exiting soon, and she's heard the transition from tween to teen is miserable.

Or it could be because she's in the hospital all the time to be with her mom.

It's the summer before seventh grade, the summer after her mother is wheeled to the emergency room for the first time. Before school let out, Allie visited on weekends. Now that her education is out of the way, she can come every day.

In the hospital, they blast the A/C in every room, and after a week of it, she can't take it anymore. She goes to to sit out in the courtyard, bathing in sunlight like she's cold-blooded, waiting for her fingertips to graduate from white back to their fleshy pink. This is good, she thinks, because it'll give her parents more time alone.

Once sufficiently warmed, she stops by a vending machine and picks out a two-pack of Reese's, taking her time with her selection, stalling, again, for the sake of her parents. She feeds the coins in and punches the code out, watches as the spiral coil turns, turns, turns. But the package never drops.

She whacks her palm against the glass. Then she taps politely, like maybe it's being difficult because she's being rude. When it still doesn't cooperate, she wraps her arms as far around it as she can (not far at all) and tries to shake the machine.

"You look like you need help."

She whips around, heat rocketing through her like a space shuttle. She's still numb over Boyfriend Number One, making her impossible to impress—but when her eyes meet the boy's behind her, she freezes.

He's taller than her, though not by much. It puts her eye-level to him, and she looks into the dark blue of his gaze a bit too long, because a smile starts curling up his face.

"It's stuck," she says quickly, stepping back, letting him in. He comes forward, balls a hand, then slams all the buttons with the flat side of his fist. The machine makes a series of alarming sounds, rattling anxiously, then dies.

She frowns. "I don't think that—"

There's a whir, the coil twists one more time, and her prize falls out. The boy, head of dark, wavy hair, turns to her, smug. He's got one dimple on the left, but nothing to match on the right. Both his hands slide into his pockets. "One of the nurses taught me that," he says.

Allie searches his face, wondering if she can find the answer before she asks. She gives up, not sure what it is she's supposed to be looking for. These days, when she examines herself in mirrors trying to see what it is everybody's always saying they see on her—you look sad—the only thing staring back at her is herself.

"What are you in for?"

He's still smiling, but his expression falls just enough to notice, conceit slipping away. "My dad," he answers. "He's got cancer."

"My mom, too."

He inspects her quizzically. "I haven't seen you around before."

"I just started coming." Technically she's been coming for a couple of months now, but she'd hardly left her mom's side before. "New in town and everything."

"Sorry about that."

She'd been trying to keep it light, but his genuine reply tugs the compulsion out of her. His gaze—lashes unfairly long—flicker to her drooping mouth. His expression somehow softens more.

She flushes, broken heart stirring. "How old are you?" she asks.

"13."

"Same."

His smile turns smug again. "You're kinda small for an 8th grader."

She rolls her eyes and turns away, rattling the remaining change in her cupped hand. "Do you want anything?"

He steps up beside her. Their reflections glance at each other. His brings a finger up and prods the glass over the sour Skittles, and it looks like he's on the other side of the glass trying to get her attention.

"Thanks," he says in advance.

Allie doesn't know what time he comes in in the mornings or what time he leaves at night. All she knows is that he's always already there by the time she arrives, and that their paths never cross when she's leaving.

"I'm gonna be an actress," she says. "The next Meryl Streep. What about you?"

"A doctor."

His answer surprises her. "Really?"

"Yeah."

"Why?" The smell of antiseptic lemon fills her nose, burns her sinuses, the backs of her eyes. She'll be fine if she never smells it again for the rest of her life.

He shrugs. "So that this never happens to anybody else."

Allie stares at him. He won't meet her eyes, and it feels deliberate. She looks away. "I'm really good at impressions," she says easily, like tension is birthday cake and she eats it for breakfast.

He looks at her askance. She smiles. "Yeah?" he says, eyebrows up.

"Yeah. Try me."

She sees him everyday. Her mom doesn't know, her dad doesn't, either. This boy is her secret, and the hotter summer gets, the heavier her shoulders grow, because she likes going to the hospital now, but for all the wrong reasons.

She doesn't know if he's got other girls in the hospital that he hangs around with like this. Maybe she's his dayshift, and when she leaves, somebody else revolves in for his nightshift. What's clear to her, though, is that he absolutely is one of Those Boys. Her radar is perfectly attuned.

Before she knows it, school is starting again. She tells him she can only visit on weekends.

On Saturdays and Sundays, she meets him at the vending machine, and they go around the hallways, the courtyard, while their parents spend time alone. They talk a lot. Sometimes Allie wonders what he's like at school, if he walks and talks with girls around the track, down the hallways. She wonders what they talk about. If any of them know about his dad.

With every passing day, an uncomfortable thing inside her grows until she thinks it might drown her. She thinks about breaking it off with Boyfriend Two, makes up scenarios in her mind, comes up with a long list of plausible excuses that have nothing to do with hospital visits. She knows she and this boy don't have anything, but it doesn't feel right—because it feels a little too right. More right than Boyfriend One ever did, or Boyfriend Two currently does. If she were to forego an excuse, though, she'd hardly be able to explain it herself. She and he are undefined, but she can be perfectly honest with him.

He's only got half a set of dimples, his dad is dying, and suddenly the rules do not apply. She has the unsettled feeling that this is more than she'll ever have with any boy for quite a long while more.

They walk and they talk and the school semester stretches and stretches and stretches. Her mother grows paler and weaker and thinner. Boyfriend Number Two breaks up with her. Allie sees him at the mall.

One day, sitting in the courtyard in the spring beside her undefined boy-friend, she realizes with a pang: the uncomfortable thing is guilt.

She feels guilty when she's with him.

She's had a boyfriend for a majority of the time she's with this undefined friend. She should be spending time with them. She should be spending time with her mom. She should be on the phone with her boyfriend while she's circling fluorescent lighting and sadness. She should be sitting at her mother's side, holding her hand.

Allie gets up and brushes her skirt off.

He glances at her, usual blue of his gaze steely grey. "What's up?"

"I should get back to my mom."

He stares, then turns away. "Yeah. I should get back to my dad."

They do it all over again tomorrow and the day after and every next time they meet until one day he says, no warning whatsoever: "I like you."

Her heart turns.

He knows everything about her. The boys she's seen, the boy she sees. He knows when they break up. He knows the moment it flipped on inside her like a switch, how it felt when she realized her mom was going to die, that first moment in her math class when Boyfriend Number One had asked.

He's told her all about the girls he leads on, the trail of broken hearts he's far too proud of. He keeps a tally, a running list, and tells her their names, which ones he's tormenting at the same time. He tells her he's always been like this, but it got worse when he realized his mom was gonna be alone one day.

"You say that to every girl," she jokes, smile wide.

"Yeah," he answers, grinning too. The dark of his eyes warms. "But I mean it with you."

They don't exchange numbers or emails. They never do in all the time they know each other, because they know what this is and where they are. And when her mom dies, Allie leaves without saying goodbye, because it doesn't matter that he's undefined or that he's a boy-friend or that he's boyfriend number one-and-a-half or one-and-three-quarters or any fraction in between. It doesn't matter that she'll never know what happens to him, to his dad, to his future, and it doesn't matter that she knows him and he knows her.

It doesn't matter, because nothing that happens in hospitals is real.

It can't be.

—

Allie watches him stalk through the crowd, split lip, bruised cheek. Garrett's got one hand tight around his right arm, pulling or pushing him towards the door, Allie can't tell. At some point in the middle of it all, Beau had joined the fight to help pry him off Hunter. He's the only one Dean responds to.

At the exit, he looks back over his shoulder. Blue eyes catch on hers like they always do, like he always knows where she is in a crowd. She's never seen that look on him before. He's never been more readable in his life.

When his back is to her again, when the bell chimes his departure—when the crush of people comes back together, closing the path that'd been right there between her and Dean—Allie realizes:

She gave up on love long before she'd ever called Dean Di Laurentis.