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I just stood there. Dumbstruck.

I didn’t want to get in. The fight-or-flight feeling I’d been wrestling with for the last three days doubled down.

I wanted to turn and run back to the house—the house I also wanted to run from. I didn’t want to be ferried up to Mike. I didn’t want to sit in the back seat while Chris drove me up to the cabin, without being able to form some plan on how to handle what was happening. And he had a girlfriend?

Why didn’t he tell me? He was dating someone and he didn’t even mention it?

“You okay?” he asked, eyeing me.

No. I was very much not okay. I had the weirdest feeling in my chest. Like I was being betrayed.

This was our time. Our car ride. How could he invite someone else to join us?

But it wasn’t our anything. It was just a ride.

I don’t know why, but this truth almost cut deeper than the Mike thing did. Another person I thought I could trust and depend on had failed me and lied to me about the nature of the way things are.

I could fully recognize that this was an irrational reaction. Chris wasn’t my boyfriend, he owed me nothing, especially explanations about who he was dating. But I felt betrayed anyway.

Chris studied me. “Hey…”

It was freezing. The wind whipped my hair around, stung my cheeks. I balked, trying to decide what to do. My bag was already in the trunk. Woofarine was in the car. The thought of going back in that house with the smell and the damp carpet—I couldn’t do it. So I got into the back seat.

My dog was sitting on Heather’s lap. He climbed the console and dove at me the second I got in. I hugged him like I was clutching a life raft.

“Hi, I’m Heather,” the woman said, twisting to smile at me as Chris got in the driver’s side.

“Larissa,” I managed. “Nice to meet you.”

It wasn’t nice to meet her. I didn’t want her here. I hated her and I didn’t even know her.

I felt nauseous.

I’d never had a panic attack before, but I felt like I was going to have one now.

I’d been counting on being able to talk to Chris during the ride so he could tell me what to do about Mike. Now I couldn’t have the conversation with Chris. I was going to show up at the cabin with no plan—and I didn’t even want to see Mike. Tomorrow was Christmas. I was supposed to… what? Pretend everything was okay in front of everyone? Open presents and drink hot chocolate and act like nothing happened?

Chris didn’t ask to see my EpiPen the way he always did when he was taking me somewhere.

This was the moment I wanted to cry. Chris not checking my medicine felt like some fatal blow. Like he’d stopped caring if I was okay. And I wasn’t okay.

We drove in silence for half an hour. Or rather Chris and I were silent, and Heather talked nonstop.

Chris’s car smelled like it always did, like him and the leather from the seats and the baby-powder air freshener he always got when he washed his car. But I couldn’t get the wet, shampoo-laced urine-vomit smell of the carpet out of my nose. It was like Phil’s cigarette smoke, an olfactory reminder that something had changed and not for the better.

Chris and Heather were holding hands between the seats. I couldn’t look away from it.

“I found a really good place for lunch,” Chris said, looking at me in the rearview mirror. “It’s in Duluth. Can you wait two hours to eat?”

“I’m not feeling well,” I said.

Heather twisted to look at me again. “You okay? I’m a physician.”

I actually laughed. Right in her face. She was pretty and smart and a doctor? Of course he’d date a woman more on his level. What else could I expect? Someone like me?

“I’m just carsick,” I said.

“Do you need me to stop?” he asked, already slowing down.