Why had she given up on him?

Because he didn’t have any balls. That’s what she had told him the last time they talked. Jason wasn’t man enough to do what needed to be done. He wasn’t man enough to take care of her. Maybe she was right. He was afraid. Every time they talked about what they were going to do, he felt like his intestines were squeezing up on him. He wished that he had never talked to that asshole from town. He wished that he could take it all back—everything they had done over the past two weeks. Allison acted like she was fine with it, but he knew she was afraid, too. It wasn’t too late. They could back out of this. They could pretend like it didn’t happen. If only Allison would see that there was no good way out. Why was Jason the only person in this whole damn mess who seemed to be cursed with a conscience?

Suddenly, there was a noise outside. He threw open the door and went into the hallway. Jason stood in the dark, glancing around like a madman. No one was there. No one was watching him. He was just being paranoid. Considering the number of Red Bulls he’d chugged and the two bags of Cheetos that were sitting like a brick in his stomach, it was no wonder he was feeling wired.

Jason went back into his room. He opened the window to let in some air. The rain had slacked off, but the sky hadn’t given up the sun in days. He checked his bedside clock, unsure whether it was morning or night. Midnight was only a few minutes away. A stiff wind was blowing, but he had been holed up inside for so long that he welcomed fresh air, even if it was cold enough to make his breath appear as a cloud in front of his face. Outside, he could see the empty student parking lot. In the distance, a dog barked.

He sat back down at his desk. He stared at the lamp by his laptop. The neck was broken. The shade dangled from two wires, hanging its head as if in shame. The light cast weird shadows in the room. He had never liked the dark. It made him feel vulnerable and lonely. It made him think about things he didn’t want to think about.

Thanksgiving was a few days away. Last week, Jason had made the usual call to his mother, but she wasn’t interested in seeing him. She never was. Jason was from his mother’s first marriage, to a man who’d gone out for beer one day and never come back. Her second husband made it clear from the start that Jason wasn’t his son. They had three daughters who barely knew Jason existed. He wasn’t invited to family get-togethers. He didn’t get invitations to weddings or holidays. His mother’s only connection to him was through the U.S. Postal Service. She mailed a check for twenty-five dollars every birthday and Christmas.

Allison was supposed to make things different. They were supposed to spend all of their holidays together. They were supposed to create their own family. That’s what they’d done for the last year and eleven months. They went to movies or ate Chinese food while the rest of the planet was holed up with relatives they didn’t like, eating food they didn’t enjoy. That was their thing—they were two against the world, filled with combined glee because they had each other. Jason had never known what it was like to be inside something good. He was always on the outside, his face pressed against the glass. Allison had given him that, and now she had taken it away.

He didn’t even know if she was still in town. She might have gone home to visit her aunt. Maybe she had run off with another guy. Allison was attractive. She could do a hell of a lot better than Jason. He wouldn’t be surprised if she was screwing some new guy right now.

A new guy.

The thought cut him like a knife. Their legs and arms entangled, her long hair draped across another guy’s chest. Probably it was a hairy chest, the kind of chest that men had, not a concave, pasty white chest that hadn’t changed since junior high school. This new guy would have balls the size of grapefruits. He would pick Allison up in his arms and take her like a beast whenever he wanted.

How could she be with another guy? Jason knew from the first time they kissed that he was going to marry her. He’d given her that ring with the promise that as soon as all of this was over, he’d buy her a better one. A real one. Had Allison forgotten that? Could she really be that cruel?

Jason chewed at his tongue, rolling it around with his front teeth until he tasted blood. He stood up and started pacing again. The broken lamp traced his movements in an eerie shadow that swung back and forth across the wall. Six paces one way. Six paces back. The shadow hesitated, stopped and started, clinging to Jason like a bad dream. He raised his hands, hunched his shoulders, and the shadow grew into a monster.

Jason dropped his hands, thinking he was going to freak himself out if he didn’t stop this.

If he could just get through Thanksgiving, all of this would be over. He and Allison would be rich, or at least not as poor. Tommy would be able to buy enough equipment to start his own gardening business. Allison would be able to quit her job at the diner and concentrate on school. Jason would … What would Jason do?

He would buy Allison that ring. He would block that other guy and his stupid hairy chest from his mind, and he and Allison would go on and live their lives together. They could get married. Have children. They’d both be scientists, doctors. They could buy a new house, new cars, leave the air-conditioning on sixty all summer if they wanted to. The last three months would be a distant memory, something they would talk about in ten, fifteen years when it was all behind them. They would be at a dinner party. Allison would’ve had a little too much to drink. Talk would turn to wild college days, and her eyes would sparkle in the candlelight as she looked at Jason, a smile tugging at her lips.

“Oh, we can top that,” she would say, and proceed to shock them all with the crazy mess they had gotten themselves into over the last few weeks.

That’s what it would end up being—a party story, like the one Jason told about the first time his papa took him duck hunting and Jason had accidentally maimed two decoys.

He needed to finish his paper for that to happen. He couldn’t just settle for a degree now. He had to be the best, the top in his class, because Allison didn’t say it, but she liked having nice things. She liked the idea of being able to go into a store and buy whatever she wanted. She hated having to balance her checkbook down to the last penny every month. Jason wasn’t going to be the kind of husband who asked how much a pair of shoes cost or why she needed another black dress. He was going to be the kind of husband who made so much money that Allison could fill ten closets with designer clothes and there would still be money left over to go to Cancún or St. Croix or wherever it was filthy rich people went on their private jets for the holidays.

Jason rested his fingers on the keys but did not type. He felt feverish. Guilt had always been a problem for him. There was no punishment that anyone could mete out that was worse than the distress brought on by Jason’s own disappointment in himself. And he should be disappointed. He should be feeling horrified by what he had done. He should have protected Allison from all of this, told her that no matter how much money was involved, it wasn’t worth it. He’d endangered her. He’d gotten Tommy mixed up in it, too, because Tommy was stupid enough to go along with anything as long as you pushed him in the right direction. Jason was responsible for both of them. He was supposed to protect his friends, not push them into oncoming traffic. Were their lives really worth so little? Was that what it boiled down to at the end of the day, twenty-something years of life for less money than what a janitor brought home?