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This is embarrassing. I’ve always been able to read a textbook in a hurricane. I read through an outage once. I read on a plane during turbulence so bad the woman next to me asked if I was a sociopath, but lately my focus is so off, and it doesn’t seem to be getting better.

I flip over a flashcard and see the abandoned tic-tac-toe game.

It happened at one in the morning, in my bed, after neither of us could sleep. He drew a tic-tac-toe grid on the back of one of my flashcards, which I initially objected to, and then we made a game of it: every winner gets one question each.

“Favorite color.”

“Green,” I answer.

“Boring.”

“It’s the wavelength the human eye is most sensitive to. We evolved in a canopy. Loving green is baseline biology, Cal. I’m not the one who needs to explain myself here.”

He stared at me. “What’s my favorite color, then?”

“Black. Because you’re a walking cliché and a famous popstar.”

“It’s blue,” he said, with enormous dignity. “Draw a grid.”

Favorite food. Favorite smell—mine is bleach, which he called deranged, and his is freshly baked cookies. Worst injury. First job. He worked at a garden center for six weeks at fifteen and was fired for smoking cigarettes in the greenhouse.

“Favorite movie.”

“Shrek 2,” he said instantly.

“No hesitation?”

“There is nothing to think about. It’s a perfect movie. It’s got a heist, an existential crisis and a cat—” And he was up on one elbow now, and I let him go for four minutes, and at some point, I realized I was just watching him talk with my chin on my hand like an idiot.

Then he said, “Favorite book.”

“You first.”

“Project Hail Mary.” No hesitation there either. “Andy Weir. Guy wakes up on a spaceship and can’t remember who he is or why he’s there, and he has to work it out from first principles. It’s about a man doing science very loudly in an empty room.” He shrugged. “I loved it.”

“You like learning things, and you like science!”

“Maybe. Your turn. Favorite book.”

“It’s a series,” I said.

“Okay.”

“It’s not—fine. It’s fantasy. Sort of. It’s about a woman who moves to a small town in Montana.”

“Right.”

“And there’s a pack that she joins.”

“A pack,” he said. “Of what, Beatrix?”

“Anyway, whose turn is it?”

“A pack⁠—”

“It’s a very well-constructed world with an internally consistent magic system. The men are hot and powerful—and they may all be werewolves— but it has fated mates, and it’s amazing!” I blurt out.

He was sitting up now. “Werewolves?”