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Ford turns away. "And here's my bedroom."

He nods, with a sheepish smile, toward the couch.

I half-smile, assuming he's joking. But he doesn't correct himself. “You sleep here?" I ask. "Not in a bedroom?”

He shrugs. “It’s where I slept when Leila was still here. Taking over her room would’ve made it seem like...”

Like she wasn’t coming back.

The kitchen makes ours seem modern by contrast. They’ve got laminate countertops in avocado green and linoleum floors in mustard yellow. “I keep trying to convince my mom to let me fix it up, but she’s worried I’ll just make it worse,” he says with a tiny wince.

“It’s nice,” I say, but we both hear the false note. “What’s this?”

In between two cabinets is a small rectangular appliance I’ve never seen before.

He laughs. “A trash compactor. It was all the rage in the seventies, apparently.” He points at the wall. “As was the built-in can opener.”

I smile and take his hand. “Stop being ashamed of your house. I like it because it’s yours.”

He turns and pulls me toward him. His kiss is hard and thorough, his way of thanking me for not judging him. “I’ve never brought anyone here before.”

“You mean you’ve never brought a girl here?”

He swallows. “No, I mean that I’ve never brought anyone here. I think it hurts my mom’s feelings, but...all of my friends, aside from Ty, live in these fucking mansions.”

I’ve only talked to his friends in passing, but they seem nice. “You’re worried they’d make fun of you?”

He shakes his head. “I’d bring them here if that was the case. The problem is that they’ll fucking feel sorry for me. They already do, thanks to my dad and the shit with Leila and other stuff. Like...freshman year, I didn’t have money to buy pads or cleats for football. My mom applied to some school fund and everyone found out. But you know...that shit’s expensive.”

My heart aches for him. Ford seems to have it all, and for the most part he does, but he's pained by what's missing.

“There are worse things than having people feel sorry for you. It means they care, to some extent.”

“It means they wouldn’t want to be you,” he counters, handing me a glass of lemonade.

Yeah. I guess. “So, is that what you want?" I ask, following him to the couch. "To become the guy everyone wants to be?”

He looks at me for a long moment. "No," he says softly. "I want a lot of other things more. But first I've got to get my mom out of here." He gestures around him. “She’s working her ass off and barely scraping by to afford this dump. After all the ways she’s suffered, she deserves a lot better.”

I wouldn’t say it to him, but that’s one benefit of my community—men don’t leave. There aren’t single parents struggling to get by. If someone’s spouse dies, she remarries or the community makes sure she has what she needs.

I bet Mrs. James would still rather live this life than Mrs. Humboldt's, though.

I press my lips to Ford’s cheek, breathing in the smell of his skin, relishing its heat against my lips.

He gives me one of those bashful smiles of his—my favorite.

"So..." I swallow. "Prom is in a couple weeks."

Kappy suggested we all go as a group. I figure I'm likely to still be grounded but also hoping that my parents will realize they've only got two months left with me and soften up a little.

Ford raises a brow. "If you tell me you're going with Alex, we're going to have a problem."

"If you tell me you're going with Amanda, we're going to have a problem."

"She asked me to take her," he says. "I told her I didn't know."

It's a tiny knife straight to my chest. I scoot to the end of the couch, as far from him as I can get. "Why?" I demand, my voice rough. "Why the hell would you take Amanda but not me?"