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And it was possible I was reading too much into her texts with Levi. She’d just reconnected with him today, and they probably just had a lot of catching up to do.

This helped a little—but not enough.

I fell asleep for an hour and woke up after having a restless dream about a bear attacking me on a hiking trail. Then I lay in bed worrying a plane was going to hit the house, or that one of the twins would get into an accident, or that I’d lost my birth certificate.

Had I lost my birth certificate?

I got up and looked for it, digging through the safe in my closet. When I found it, it was two in the morning, and I was wired. I wanted to go for a run. To tear through the streets at full speed and outpace this feeling, or wear myself out to the point of exhaustion so I’d be too tired to think. But I couldn’t leave without going out the front door, and I didn’t want to wake Briana. So I used my rower instead.

After forty-five minutes, I was dripping with sweat and no closer to sleeping than I had been before I started. I took a shower and figured I might as well journal to work through some of what I was feeling. So I tiptoed to the plant room and wrote. After two hours of that, I finally felt de-escalated enough to fall asleep around six, but I was up again at eight, right on schedule.

And then she texted him the whole day.

In the kitchen when I was making her breakfast. In the living room on her air mattress. In the bathroom while she was doing her makeup. Then the whole way to my parents’ house for the bachelor and bachelorette parties.

She never stopped.

Her phone was on silent now, so I didn’t hear the pings. And I didn’t ask if she was talking to him, but I knew that she was, and I filled in every awful scenario in my mind: He was flirting with her, and she was flirting back. She couldn’t wait until our arrangement was over so she could date him openly. Her mom would be happy about it because she always thought they’d get married and now maybe they finally would.

My nerves were frayed. By the time we pulled up to my parents’ house, the gnawing in the pit of my stomach was starting to make me feel sick. I was getting overheated and sweaty. I kept wiping my palms on my pants. I had to check three times that I’d put the truck in park. I couldn’t remember.

“Okay,” she said, finally putting down her phone, pivoting in her seat to face me. “So here’s your catchphrase of the day. Ready?”

I wasn’t ready. I couldn’t concentrate. “Yeah.”

“‘In this economy?’” She smiled. “That’s it. That’s the phrase.”

I just stared at her. “Okay.”

She eyed me. “It’s a good phrase, Jacob.”

“Yeah.”

She tilted her head. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

I wasn’t. I was feeling dizzy. I felt like my brain was detaching from my body. I couldn’t breathe right.

I wanted to tell her she couldn’t go to Levi’s next week. I wanted her to stop texting him. I wanted the phone to stop silently going off.

More than that, I wanted her to want me back. I wanted us to be real. I wanted this to be different and it wasn’t going to be different and I felt like I was collapsing from the outside in.

It was hard enough to deal with the reality of Briana’s non-feelings for me. But at least I had these few months. At least I got to be close to her, even if it was just going to be for a little while. But that safe space had been breached now, and water was spilling in, and I was drowning.

“Jacob?”

I blinked at her.

She was looking at me weird. “You don’t have to go to this.”

“What?”

“The bachelor party. You can just say you don’t feel well or something. We can go home.”

“I’m…I’m fine.”

She studied me. “You look nervous.”