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I didn’t love Minty or Mitchell, or whatever he needed or wanted to be called. I’d Dommed him, and he’d been a dream sub in a lot of ways. I’d felt things for him, stuff I didn’t like feeling, and I’d let myself open up to theideaof loving him because—
Because I was going to die.
And I didn’t want to go out without having shared that kind of thing—love—with another person. Did that mean Minty was justin the right place at the right time? That my feelings weren’t even about him? Were they aboutme?
Why didn’t that make me feel better?
“Lukey, you don’t seem okay.” Betsy said this with quiet empathy, her hand resting in mine and squeezing. “I know I’m not as smart as some of your other friends, but you can talk to me.”
My heart wrenched. “You’re plenty smart, Bets. It’s not that.”
“What is it then?”
“I guess I don’t know what I feel or what I want.”
“Oh. Like when Rodney told me he was going to get his mom to buy me a ring, and I was confused because I didn’t want him to?”
“Rodney’s buying you a ring?” I frowned. They were both legally old enough, but how would it work? Would they stay at Riverwoods together? Or would they—
“Don’t worry, Lukey. I said no.”
“Why? I thought you loved Rodney.”
“I want to date a few more years.” She smiled again, her eyes twinkling. “I like dating. I didn’t get to do it when I was a teenager. Now it’s more fun. We can have sex, and no one can stop us.”
I blinked. “Um…”
She giggled. “Are you going to give me a safe sex talk too?”
I huffed. “No, I’ll leave it up to Mom to do that.”
Betsy laughed again.
“I do feel like that, though,” I said. “Like what you said about the ring. I didn’t go into this, uh,situationwith this guy to fall in love. I didn’t mean to develop feelings for him. But when I started to feel them anyway, I wanted to see if—”
Wasthat what I’d wanted? WhathadI been doing with Minty?
“Hell if I know what I wanted to see, Bets. But what I do know is I scared him off.”
“Because you liked him too much?”
“Yeah. I don’t think he wants to be liked by the men he’s sleepingwith.”
Betsy’s brow creased, and I realized I’d said too much, but then she said, “Julianne’s like that. Across the hall from me? She sleeps with guys and when they like her for it, she tells them to go away.”
“Julianne has Down?” I asked.
Betsy shrugged. “Yes.”
“And the guys she sleeps with also…?” I didn’t know how to ask.
Betsy frowned then. “She’s a grown-up. She’s twenty-nine. She can choose for herself.”
I nodded, though some part of me worried all the same. I was glad Betsy seemed content with Rodney. “I guess you’re right, Bets.”
“I am.”
We ate in silence for a few minutes, Mom’s chili going down easy. Then, as I unwrapped the homemade lemon cookies, Betsy’s favorite, she asked me, “Did the boy you liketellyou he doesn’t like to be liked? Before you started dating?”
