The kitchen was in a state. It always was, no matter how many times Elliott’s dad tried to put snack foods back in the cupboard, or quit leaving bills and receipts in the middle of the table.

It was the hub of the house, the first place Dad stopped when he got home after a long night shift, and the first place he unloaded his pockets. It was also where they gravitated to on days like this.

“I was thinking pancakes.”

Elliott moved a pile of broken-down cardboard boxes destined for the recycling bin to the floor and sat in the chair. “You sure you have enough room? Or clean surfaces?”

“Get outta here. It’s as clean as any kitchen, it’s just cluttered.”

“Pancakes it is, then.”

They hadn’t even been made yet, and Elliott knew they’d taste bittersweet. Watching his dad putter around making them was fun, but after four days, this would probably be the last meal they had together before Elliott got on a bus to UCLA in a couple of hours.

Observing in silence, he could pretend that was the only reason, and that he wasn’t remembering sitting at a different table while someone else made food for him on a quiet Sunday.

“Here we go.” A steaming plate crowded with pancakes landed in front of him. “Not too bad, if I do say so myself.”

“Smells great.”

They ate as soundlessly as they’d cooked—or Dad had cooked—because after being home for three days, Elliott still didn’t have the energy to talk about anything more serious than the neighbors down the street getting a divorce.

He’d cherish every moment of the visit though. It had been exactly what he needed, even if it hadn’t fixed everything.

After the food was gone, Elliott washed the sticky syrup from his hands, then checked his phone. A text notification made his heart leap, then plunge.

Amanda: How was the Roman Empire cut in half? With a pair of CAESARS!! LOLOLOL see you Tuesday!

He smiled, even as he sent back a rolling eyes emoji and chastised himself for hoping, for a second, it was Aiden.

Shoving the phone away, he tried to take over cleaning duty from his dad, without much success.

“It’s only fair,” Elliott argued, wrapping the butter back up in tattered foil. “You cooked, I should clean.”

Dad shook his head while he picked up clutter from the table, wiping the surface down before replacing each item exactly where it was. “Most of this isn’t your mess, and I don’t mind.”

“I know you don’t, but I don’t either.”

While they worked, Elliott rushed to fit in the last bits of his life he hadn’t told his dad yet.

“I tutored—” He stopped and redirected to keep his lies in place. “I had a new client for a while.”

“Not anymore?”

“I think we’re friends now? We’re going to continue with her tutoring sessions, but she keeps dragging me out for coffee.” Dragged was a strong word. On both occasions, Elliott had gone willingly. Just thinking about it made his chest warm.

“That’s good. You need dragging sometimes.” Dad was smiling, but it was the tight one he used when he was blustering past his worry.

“I’m not a hermit, I promise.” Or at least, he hadn’t been when he’d been seeing Aiden regularly. Amanda’s request for more tutoring sessions couldn’t have come at a better time, since he had more of it on his hands than ever. No more late-night cuddling sessions for him, until someone else . . . Aaand those thoughts would lead nowhere good, so Elliott shook his head to clear it. “Where do you want this pile?”

“Oh, just leave it on the table.”

“You can’t do that with everything, Dad, or you won’t be able to see the wood.” He managed to find a place for the stack, but not before a couple of brightly colored flyers fell to the floor. He crouched to pick them up and actually looked at them, with their pictures of crisp lawns and impressive houses.

“You can just leave them on the top, there,” Dad said, already straightening the rest of the papers in an attempt to neaten a mess that wouldn’t be neatened by anything less than a bonfire.

“What are these?” The question was redundant. He could see exactly what they were, but that didn’t answer his questions.

His dad wasn’t a hoarder. He was crap at tidying and organization, but he only kept things that were important. And he wanted the pair of pamphlets from local realtors right on the top of the pile.

His dad had gone still. That was more damning than anything he could have said.

“I’ve been waiting for the right moment to tell you.” Dad’s strong fingers thumped against the scratched table in a broken rhythm. “It hasn’t come yet, so I guess this will have to do. Elliott, I’m going to sell the house.”

The confirmation was just as gut-wrenching as it would have been without the warning. “Why?”

“Why not?”

“Because you’ve worked so hard to keep it. So have I.” Elliott’s bones were tired from working, and from the worry that he wasn’t doing enough. “Over ten years, scrimping to pay the mortgage every month, and you’re just giving up?”

Dad’s shoulders were rounded, but his face showed only patient confidence. “It’s the logical way to go. I’ll be retiring sooner than both of us think, and right now, the only thing this place has going for it is the location. Someone will pay a good amount for the property alone, someone with money who can knock it down and build their dream house.”

“Knock it down?” The edge of the kitchen counter bit into his fingers. He hadn’t even noticed he’d backed up into it. “Dad, you can’t.” Anger had eclipsed his shock. Everything he’d done to save this place, and this was how it ended?

“I know it’s hard, but give it some time to sink in and you’ll see.”

“You can’t. Not after so long.”

“Keeping this place won’t keep her with us.” For the first time, his dad’s calm cracked, his mouth tugging down with heartache. “Brick and mortar are just that. We’ll either remember her or we won’t. Having this place won’t make a difference.”

Her ghost was there now. Next to the fridge door, stealing a drink from the milk carton. By the sink, singing while she did the dishes. At the table, her bright smile was the first thing Elliott would see in the morning when he came downstairs.

She stole his breath, and she wasn’t even real.

The chair creaked as his dad got up, walking through her apparition to put his hands on Elliott’s shoulders.

“Listen,” he said, like it was easy to do over the roaring in Elliott’s ears. “It’s hard for you right now. It’s taken me a couple years to wrap my head around it, but this is the right thing. If I can get as much for the house as the appraiser says I will, there’ll be enough left over after paying the rest of the mortgage to take care of all my debts.”

Instinct made him try to argue. “Our—”

“No. My debts. We’ll see, but there might even be enough for me to cover your next semester.”

The bottom dropped out of Elliott’s stomach. “Dad, you don’t—”

“It’s only fair. We’re in this together, right? We can have all of that, and we only need to let go of this place.”

More silence filled the kitchen. His dad’s hands fell from Elliott’s shoulders, hanging limply at his sides in a mirror of Elliott’s position, but with all the weight of life slumping his shoulders.

“It’s falling apart, son, you know that.” The softness of his voice didn’t lighten the blow. “The roof won’t last, the basement—”

“I know. That doesn’t make it easier.”

Elliott couldn’t stay there. Pleading eyes and old ghosts crowded him, and escaping was the best option, so escape he did. Again.

The start of a new habit, perhaps, but this time, he didn’t run away into the arms of a big mistake. He got as far as the garage before his steam ran out and he was alone.

Dad’s tool bench was tucked into the corner, covered by rusty wrenches and bent screwdrivers, with a sun-bleached camping chair next to it. The fabric rasped when Elliott sat down, but it held, more sturdy than Elliott felt.

The house. Gone. Probably soon if it’d already been appraised.

He didn’t want to cry again. He’d already done enough of that on Kevin’s shoulders on his first day home, switching between righteous anger and grief at the drop of a hat, or one reminder of—

His phone materialized in his hands before he’d really thought about it, chasing away thoughts of Aiden by opening his email, checking his calendar, his texts, anything to keep his mind off everything.

He ended up flitting between two pointless games, unable to concentrate on either of them, so when a call came through, he picked it up in seconds and asked, “Did you know?”

Kevin answered right away, to his credit. “Not fully. But he had some questions about my neighborhood, what the rent was like. I wondered, especially when he didn’t seem that worried about the basement. I didn’t know, though, so I didn’t want to tell you until it was for sure.”

“It’s okay.” His shitty week wasn’t Kevin’s fault. Nor was it Dad’s. “Did he call you?”

“Yeah. He sounded really cut up.” A nonjudgmental silence followed, for Elliott to process his guilt before Kevin asked, “Are you okay?”

“I’ll be fine. It’s just . . .”

“Tough.”

The air in the garage was stale and smelled of metal and gasoline. Elliott sucked it down, Kevin’s anchoring presence—even over the phone—helping to clear his head.

Kevin cleared his throat. “You remember when we met?”

“Of course. At the hospital.”

“The north parking lot. We had fun, right?”

They had, pretending to be superheroes and ninjas, even though they’d both been on the cusp of being too old for games like that. While Elliott’s mother lay dying, they’d become inseparable.

“That lot’s gone now,” Kevin said, interrupting vivid sepia-toned memories.

“Really?”

“Yeah. Couple years ago. They put the parking underground and built a new wing.”

“Oh.” He hadn’t driven out that way since he’d started at UCLA. “Cool.”

“So, you know. The memories are still there.”

Elliott smiled into the phone, holding it with both hands. “Wow, when did you get so cheesy?”

“Hey, I’m just trying to help!”

“I know. Thanks.” The sound of his feet shifting echoed around the garage. “It’s not that I think she’ll really be gone if we lose this place. We have enough photos, and I’ll never forget her. It just feels like giving up, that’s all.”

“Well, maybe it’s okay to give up. You could use a break, man. You deserve it.”

Did he?

Last week hadn’t been the first time he’d run away from something. He’d wanted so badly to get out of his small town, leaving this house and his dad behind to drown in academia, with no guarantee he’d be able to make the most of his degree.

Wasn’t he as much to blame for giving up something he’d forgotten to cherish? He’d been so caught up in keeping the house that he’d lost sight of why he wanted it in the first place: For Dad. So he’d have something when Elliott was gone, chasing dreams and running from bad memories.

“You still there, Elliott?”

“Yeah,” he rasped. “I’m gonna go, though.”

“Okay. But talk to your dad. Don’t leave town mad.”

“Good advice.” Whether he’d take it wasn’t so certain.

“You know it. I’m always right.”

After they hung up, the garage was silent again. The light coming under the door had changed from the white of morning to golden midday, but he didn’t move.

Behind him, the door squeaked open. He didn’t look, because those heavy footsteps down the stairs could only have been one person.

“We should get going soon,” his dad said. “Are you packed?

“Yes. Just need to grab my bag.”

There was only one chair in the garage, but Elliott’s dad found a flat, mostly clean part of the tool bench to lean on, his arms and legs crossed as he contemplated the concrete floor. “I’m sorry to have sprung this on you so quickly.”

Elliott shrugged. “It’s okay. I don’t think you could have done better.”

“Give the idea some time to grow on you. Trust me. It’s the right thing.”

The canvas arms of the camping chair crunched under his hands. “I do trust you. Logically, I know it’s the right move. The medical bills are one thing, but the house needs more funds than we’ll ever have to put into it. But when will it stop feeling like we’re quitting the marathon five hundred yards from the finish line?”

“I hate to be the bearer of bad news, son, but we’re a lot farther than five hundred yards from victory. And even if we did get there, what would be the cost?” Dad slid across the bench closer to Elliott, probably picking up a few splinters on the way. “It’s like the poor guy in that book your mother used to read you. The one who ran a marathon to some city to tell them the Greeks won.”

Elliott couldn’t help a small smile at his father’s enthusiasm. “Pheidippides.”

“Gesundheit. He finished the whole thing, then dropped down dead. Maybe if he’d passed on the torch to someone else, he wouldn’t have—”

“Dad, I can see you trying to relate to me, but you don’t have to.” It came out sharper than he’d meant it to, but he softened it with another smile. “I’ll take that time you said I should. Let me come around to the idea.”

“Okay.”

“Where are you going to live?”

“I figured I’ll get an apartment. Something small, close to the station. Easier to keep clean, right?”

Elliott nudged his dad’s knee with a toe. “Nah, you’ll just shove the same stuff into a smaller space.”

“Maybe. There’ll always be space for you, though, kiddo. My couch is always open.”

Out of nowhere, the guilt he’d been fighting off ratcheted up, and all he could do was stare at his phone in his hands, wondering over and over if there was more he could have done, places he could have trimmed his budget. Useless, now, but what if—

“You’d better cut that out right now.”

He looked up to see a chastising finger and a pointed glare in his direction. “What? I’m not doing anything.”

“Uh-huh. Sure. I saw that look on your face the day you got accepted into UCLA. I won then, and I’ll win now.” Dad’s knees cracked as he crouched down so that the two of them were on the same level. “Kiddo, you might not be ready to hear this, but I’m happy, and not despite the fact that I’m selling this place. It’s partly because of that. It’s gonna be like starting over. Making new memories.”

It was the perfect thing to say—something Elliott could remember later on tonight when he was lying awake—but it didn’t take away his guilt. It just changed it, because he knew exactly what his dad was talking about.

The presence of his mom in every room was as claustrophobic as it was precious, and by the end of each summer, he was always dying to get back to school to have a break from it. With the option of trips home taken away, the relief was dizzying.

“We should head out,” Dad said, straightening up and shaking out his legs.

“I’ll get my stuff.” Elliott stood, but before he could shuffle to the door, his dad’s hand settled on his elbow.

“By the way.” Dad’s salt and pepper eyebrows—when had that happened?—were low over his twinkling eyes. “If you try to send me another penny, I’ll disown you.”

Elliott grimaced. “Come on, Dad—”

“No, I’m serious.” He tipped his head. “Okay, not that serious, but serious enough that I’ll just send it back. That’s a promise, so don’t even try.”

It was a conversation they’d had before, when his dad’s pride was at its most bruised, but this time, there was a steely core to the oath. Elliott could tell he meant it, so he cleared his tight throat.

“Okay, Dad.”

“You’re gonna be fine, right? I know you’ve been really down this break, and I respect you enough that I won’t pry. But you won’t keep whatever’s bothering you inside to eat away at you, right?”

Elliott wanted to say that everything was fine, that he was having a normal college experience and that his heartbreak—which he’d spoken of only briefly on his first day back—was the run-of-the-mill kind.

Someday, he’d be able to tell the truth.

“I’ll be all right,” he said, for now. “Promise.”

With one tug on his arm, Elliott was wrapped in a warm, solid hug.

“I should have told you all this days ago.” Dad’s voice rumbled through Elliott’s bones. “So you could process a bit before you left, but I was selfish. I wanted to enjoy the days I had with you.”

“It’s okay,” he murmured in his father’s ear. “I miss you.”

“You’re still here. How can you miss me?”

“I just do. I’ll see you again soon, I promise.”

“I’ll hold you to it.”

They broke apart, both of them blinking fast.

“All right, kiddo, let’s shake a leg.”

While his dad started the car, Elliott procrastinated the end of his trip, trailing his fingers along the walls, cataloguing each detail.

If this was the last time he saw the place when it was whole and untainted by realtors putting a brave face on it, he wanted his memories to be crystal clear.

His thin mattress squeaked as he collapsed back onto it.

He didn’t feel recharged, exactly. He was still as tired from the tangled mess of his emotions as he was at the beginning of the break, but at least he’d been topped up on parental guidance and affection.

Brotherly love, too. Kevin probably knew he hadn’t gotten the full story, but he was a good enough friend not to press for details. All he’d done was agree and curse Aiden’s name, which had been exactly what Elliott had needed.

There wasn’t enough room to stretch out all the kinks from the bus, but he put his hands on the concrete wall behind his head and pointed his toes to the footboard. The trip had been long, with little to do but think about Aiden, the fight, all the words he wished he could take back, and what he was going to do.

He reached for his phone and read some emails he’d been ignoring. There wasn’t much. The campus bookstore was having a sale, a professor had sent an email about office hours, his floor president had called a meeting, the scholarship committee—

Heart sluggishly pounding, Elliott clicked the email.

Dear Mr. Meyer, we are pleased to inform you that you’ve been awarded a scholarship. Please RSVP to the presentation ceremony . . .

Wasn’t life funny? At the end of one of the worst weeks of his life, a bit of good news. Maybe he’d be able to buy that laptop after all with the extra tidbit in his savings account.

Sending off his response to the ceremony invite—yes, duh—was the work of a moment, then he was all caught up. Then, following a long-rehearsed pattern, he opened his banking app.

He had his last month’s pay in his bank account. He nearly sent it back until he remembered that they weren’t simply ending a relationship, they were terminating a business arrangement. If he refused to take the payment they’d agreed on, then he was going back on everything he’d told himself about keeping it professional.

So he was back to where he’d started at the beginning of the year. A little better off, now that his dad had put his foot down about helping out, sure. But he still had to pay for his living expenses, pay for a useless degree he loved.

Even if he made his mythical tutoring side hustle a reality and earned one of the teaching-assistant spots, they wouldn’t cover everything. A regular job with more hours might, but then he couldn’t study as much as he did now, or beg for extra projects like he’d planned to do in his final year—

No. He wasn’t done. He’d find someone else. Although, it’d probably be someone worse than the two who’d come before.

No one was lucky three times in a row.

He drifted in his bed, too tired to get up, too hungry to fall asleep fully.

Then his phone rang.

Before he looked, he knew it wasn’t Kevin or Dad. And who else—besides the new addition of Amanda, who usually only texted in emoji hieroglyphics—would call him?

Aiden’s picture lit up the screen, and Elliott had to fight to stop himself from stroking the crinkle of his forehead. (Elliott remembered taking it, batting away Aiden’s hands, laughing at Aiden’s exaggerated annoyance.) Instead, he declined the call.

His hands shook as he did it, but the pain was far away and it still felt right. This was something he was supposed to do in order to move on, wasn’t it? He’d never been in a real relationship, but didn’t people say a clean break was better?

Maybe he’d be ready to talk to Aiden someday. For now, there was no point in causing himself more pain when there was no way their relationship could go back to what it was.

When his phone rang again, he declined once more, then blocked Aiden’s number.