Somehow, out of everything, that’s what does it: I start to cry.

“Hey.” Miles moves closer. “It’s okay. It’s . . . fuck.” He pulls me roughly into his chest, his wine bottle still hanging from his hand. He kisses the top of my head like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

In actuality, it’s the first time he’s touched me, period. I’ve never been super physically affectionate with even my close friends, but I have to admit that after weeks of exactly no physical contact, it feels nice to be held by a near–perfect stranger.

“It’s ridiculous,” he says. “It’s unbelievably fucked.” He smooths my hair back with his free hand as I cry into his T-shirt, which smells only very faintly of weed, and much more of something spicy and woodsy.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I should’ve thrown the invitation away. I don’t know why I didn’t.”

“No.” I draw back, wiping my eyes. “I get it. You didn’t want to be alone with it.”

His gaze drops guiltily. “I should’ve kept it to myself.”

“I would’ve done the same thing,” I say. “I promise.”

“Still,” he murmurs. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” I insist. “You’re not the one marrying Petra instead of me.”

He winces a little.

“Shit! Now I’m sorry,” I say.

He shakes his head as he sits back from me. “I just need a minute,” he says, avoiding my gaze. He turns his head to stare out the window.

Oh, god. He’s crying now too. Or trying very hard not to. Shit, shit, shit.

“Miles!” I’m in a panic. It’s been a while since I comforted someone.

“I just need a second,” he repeats. “I’m fine.”

“Hey!” I crawl across the couch toward him and take his face in my hands, proof that the wine has hit my bloodstream.

Miles looks up at me.

“They,” I say, “suck.”

“She’s the love of my life,” he says.

“The love of your life sucks,” I tell him.

He fights a smile. There’s something adorable about it, so puppyish that I find myself tempted to ruffle his already messy hair. When I do, his smile just barely slants up. The movement makes his dark eyes glimmer.

It’s been six weeks since I last had sex—by no means a personal record—but at his expression, I feel a surprising zing of awareness between my thighs.

Miles is handsome, if not the kind of man to make your jaw drop and hands sweat on sight. That was Peter—TV handsome, Mom called it. The kind that knocks you off balance from the start.

Miles is the other kind. The kind that’s disarming enough that you don’t feel nervous talking to him, or like you need to show your best angle, until—wham! Suddenly, he’s smiling at you with his messy hair and impish smirk, and you realize his hotness has been boiling around you so slowly you missed it.

Also, he smells better than expected.

Counterpoint: he’s my roommate and was just crying over the love of his life.

There are surely more pragmatic ways to take our minds off this mess. “Do you want to watch Bridget Jones’s Diary?” I offer.

“No.” He shakes his head and I release my hold on his face, surprised how my heart flags at the rejection, or maybe just the thought of shuffling to my bedroom to be alone with these feelings.

“We shouldn’t mope,” he goes on, with another shake of his head.

“But I’m getting so good at it,” I whine.

“Let’s go out,” he says.

“Out?” It sounds like I’ve never even heard the word before. “Out where?”

Miles stands, stretching a hand out to me. “I know a place.”

4

Two hours ago, I never would’ve guessed I’d end the night at a neighborhood bar called MEATLOCKER, but here I am, taking shots with my roommate and an old biker named Gill.

Gill had thoroughly approved when Miles started up “Witchy Woman” on the jukebox in the corner, and after drunkenly sidling up to us and making conversation, he’d wanted to know how we’d met, likely assuming we were a couple. Without any hesitation, Miles told him, “The love of my life ran off with her fiancé,” and this had inspired much alcohol-based charity on Gill’s part.

As we’d played a round of darts, two rounds of pool, and a drinking game whose rules were completely incomprehensible to me, I watched in awe as Miles expertly extracted Gill’s life story from him.

Born in Detroit to a nurse and a maintenance tech injured on the job at an automobile manufacturer, Gill had fled the Midwest at sixteen via motorcycle. He’d followed a band on the road for a decade, then briefly joined a cult in California, done security for the stars, and wound up back here after some mysterious trouble, either with the law or possibly the mob—the only thing Miles couldn’t get out of him.

For someone with the innate social charm of a mounted fish (me), watching Miles befriend this stranger felt like seeing Michelangelo paint the Sistine Chapel: impressive, but also dizzying. Like any second, he might fall off his ladder and splatter on the marble below.

Gill kept buying us drinks, except for when the bartender, a cute redhead with a nose ring and a literal MOM tattoo, bought all three of us drinks.

Now, when last call rolls around, Gill shoves a twenty-dollar bill at us. “For the cab ride home.”

“No, no, no,” Miles says, pushing the bill back toward him. “Keep your money, Gill. How else are you getting to Vegas?”

Vegas, we’d learned, was his next destination.

But Gill tucks the bill in the pocket on Miles’s shirt, then claps one leathery hand on each of our cheeks. “Stay strong, kids,” he says sagely, then turns, tosses his beat-up leather jacket over one shoulder, and literally whistles a goodbye to the bartender.

By the time we’ve finished our last round, the rain has stopped, and the night is pleasantly cool, so we decide to walk home in a drunken zigzag, Miles’s arm slung over my shoulder and mine around his waist like we’re two old friends rather than very drunk, newly minted allies. “Does that kind of thing happen to you often?” I ask.

“What kind of thing?” Miles says.

“Gill,” I say.

“There aren’t many Gills in the world,” Miles replies.