I head for the door, but not before imparting some last saintly wisdom upon Tris. “Be more careful next time, bitch,” I tell her.

She doesn’t look up from her fumbling wallet maneuver, she just lifts her middle finger with the Jersey-bitch rhinestone-studded black-and-yellow-painted nail tip at me. “Okay, bitch,” she calls back to me.

I have enough cash for a cab ride all the way back home and the driver can go f**k himself if he tries to give me grief about a fare to Jersey. I look out onto the street in search of a cab but see Nick instead, leaning against a telephone booth outside the grocery.

I am not about hate anymore, or humiliation, or regret. I’m too tired for that, too done and yet too renewed.

I walk over to him, and mark the sign of the cross from his forehead to his chest to each side of his heart, In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Norah. Then I caress that cheek of Nick’s one last time, because I want one last touch, I deserve it. I tell him, “You are absolved.”

I walk away, placing my pinkie and index fingers in my mouth to whistle for a cab, all alone on this almost-morning deep in the throes of big bad Lower Manhattan, but protected by the sacred shroud of Salvatore upon mine shoulders.

I’m f**king keeping Nick’s jacket.

11. NICK

Fuck her.

Fuck her for getting in that cab. Fuck her for f**king with my mind. Fuck her for not knowing what she wants. Fuck her for dragging me into it. Fuck her for being such a fantastic kisser. Fuck her for ruining my favorite band. Fuck her for barely saying a word to me before she left. Fuck her for not waving. Fuck her for getting my hopes up. Fuck her for making my hopes useless. Fuck her for taking off with my f**king jacket.

Fuck me.

Fuck me for always getting into situations like this. Fuck me for caring. Fuck me for not knowing the words that would’ve made her stay. Fuck me for not knowing what I want. Fuck me for wavering. Fuck me for not kissing her back the right way. Fuck me for getting my hopes up. Fuck me for not having more realistic hopes. Fuck me for giving her my f**king jacket.

Fuck.

If I hadn’t stayed those extra two minutes in the dressing room, staring at the mirror, as if my face would suddenly tell me the answers my mind didn’t know. If I’d been able to push through the crowd instead of being stuck inside its haphazard body-maze. If I’d seen her in that grocery before she got to the door. If I’d said something when I saw her coming. If I’d managed any of these ifs—would I have been able to avoid the inevitable f**k-up, the full-force f**k-off? My pride shut me up, my hurt shut me down, and together they ganged up on my hope and let her get away.

To go back into the club alone means defeat. To stay outside looking at the taillights of her cab means defeat. To go home and pass out means defeat. To sit right down on the pavement and stare at the curb means defeat—but it’s the defeat that’s closest, so I sit down and start tracing the edge of the sidewalk. I’ve moved myself to foot level, which is exactly where I should be. Foot in mouth, stomped all over, kick me kick me kick me. It’s Ludlow Street, so the shoes that pass me are all somewhere between hip and  p**n . Neon-colored sneakers, vixen pumps, stiletto boots for men and women. If I had my guitar, I might be able to make some change. But instead all I have are the songs crashing together in my head. They’re all sad. They’re all bitter. And they’re all that I have.

I didn’t let her go. She went. It’s not my fault.

She did it.

She could undo it.

This is feeling so f**king familiar.

Why do we even bother? Why do we make ourselves so open to such easy damage? Is it all loneliness? Is it all fear? Or is it just to experience those narcotic moments of belonging with someone else? Norah, don’t you know it was as simple as the way you dragged me off the dance floor? You didn’t have to make out with me to get me there. And now I know this. And now I can say this. And now you’re gone.

It’s my fault, isn’t it?

Fuck this.

Fuck this wondering. Fuck this trying and trying. Fuck this belief that two people can become one ideal. Fuck this helplessness. Fuck this waiting for something to happen that probably won’t ever happen.

“Oh, Nick—what did she do to you?”

Pink Panther–pink open-toed heels. I look up, and it’s funny. Because I swear it’s Tris standing over me, looking sympathetic. It’s like being on one of those TV shows where the dead mother comes back every once in a while to talk. Impossible, but right when you’d most expect her.

“Tris,” I say, because I can’t think of anything else to say.

She shakes her head, brushes off a spot of pavement, then sits down next to me.

“Where’s Norah?” she asks.

I shrug. “Probably three-quarters of the way through the Lincoln Tunnel.”

“She never could take it,” Tris says, pulling out a cigarette, then handing the lighter to me so I can spark it. “Never. Put her on the spot and she’ll just refuse to admit that the spot is there. This one time? We were all going skinny-dipping. No big deal. We all have pools. We know what that’s like. But I can tell right away that there’s no way Norah’s going to do it. This boy she likes—holy shit, I think it was Andy Biggs—well, he’s going to be there. And she doesn’t want to see him like that. But does she protest? No. Does she put up a fight? No. She comes over with us, plays DJ for a while, and when it’s time for us to strip and get in the water, she disappears. Walks like two f**king miles back to her house without saying a word. The next day, she doesn’t even pretend she was feeling sick or anything. Doesn’t try to explain it at all.”

She hasn’t said this many words to me in four weeks—no, more than that. Because toward the end all the words started leaving. Except for the ones that had to lock up at the end of the night.

I don’t know whether I can touch her. I mean, reach across those two or three inches and let my hand fall on her arm. Feel what that’s like again. See if it feels like the past, or something in a different tense.

“Don’t,” she says. “Don’t get f**king moony on me, Nick. Because if you do, I am out of here faster than Norah. Get it?”

I nod. Try not to look at her skin.

“Good.” Tris lets loose a smoke signal. “I don’t want to talk about us.”

You never did, I think.

When someone breaks up with you, their beauty—which you took such satisfaction in—suddenly becomes unfair. It’s like that with Tris right now. She’s even managed to arrange herself in the lamplight so the shadows hit in just the right way. It feels like a rebuke.

We sit in silence for a second. She takes a drag. She’s cinematic and I’m a f**king sitcom. The silence doesn’t bother her at all, but it freaks the hell out of me. So I do what I always vowed not to do, and always found myself doing anyway. I throw “I miss you” into the breach. It even feels empty to me. Like I’m not saying it to the right person.

“Don’t start that again,” Tris says, but without the edge I was expecting. “It doesn’t prove anything except that I don’t feel the same way.” Another drag of the cigarette, and an ear turned toward the club. “They sound kick-ass tonight, don’t they? I thought the big time would ruin them, but maybe I was wrong. I should’ve slept with Owen O. while I had the chance. Then I would’ve been only one degree of spreaderation from whatever teen-movie starlet gets to him first. I just hope they don’t name their daughter after a f**king fruit.”

“April,” I say.

“What?”

“April. You said you wanted to name our daughter April.”

Tris shoots me a curious look. “Did I? I don’t know if it’s sweet or scary that you remember that.”

I find the courage to ask, “Aren’t sweet and scary the same thing to you?”

She grins a little at my insight and nods. “Maybe. Sorry.”

“Sorry?”

“Yeah. Sorry.”

She draws more of the embers toward her, stares not at me but at the punks walking across the street from us.

“Tris, I—”

“Do you like her?”

“What?”

“Norah. Do you like her?”

“Can you like someone who confuses the hell out of you?”

“All the f**king time.”

“Did I confuse the hell out you?”

It’s really just a question, but this time Tris is annoyed, flicking her cigarette at me so ashes scatter on my shirt.

“Shut up, okay?” she says. “Enough already. ENOUGH. Yes, you confuse the hell out of me. Because not only can you not let go, but you don’t even f**king realize that the thing you’re holding on to isn’t even there. You think I hurt you? Well, I could have hurt you so much more.”

“How?” I have to ask.

“By telling the truth, Nick. I thought you’d see it. I thought you’d figure it out. I had no idea how completely blind you could make yourself. And yes, I could have just come right out and said it. But you were just so f**king vulnerable that I could never do it. And then I hurt you anyway. But f**k, Nick—you needed to be hurt. You needed to have the truth kicked into you.”

“It’s more like a stabbing than a kicking,” I tell her, just so she’ll know.

“For me it’s a kicking,” Tris replies. “But whatever. The subject of us is through. The subject of you and Norah is not. Let me give you some free advice. She’s a runner for sure—she’ll run away every time without saying a word. But here’s the thing—you are not a runner. And deep down, I don’t think Norah wants to run, either. She just feels like she has to. Partly because she’s a tiresome spoiled-brat smartass with no fashion sense. And partly because she’s a f**king human being.”

She’s making sense, and that’s like a rebuke, too. Why couldn’t we have had these conversations when we were together? I think. And then I realize what I’ve done—I’ve made when we were together a separate, almost distant place. I still feel the hurt, but I feel much less desire to undo it.

“I’m through with you for tonight,” Tris says, standing up. “Find that other f**k-up and have f**ked-up children together. Don’t name them after fruits or months. Be original and just name them like children.”

“But she’s gone,” I say.

Tris snorts. “Nick, Norah’s not gone. She’s clearly someplace. All you have to do is find out where that is.”

“Any ideas?” I ask.

“Nope,” Tris answers, walking out of my life once again. “You’re on your own.”

I let her leave. I watch her walk into the blast of music blaring from the open door of the club.

Then I look back to the sidewalk and try to map the possibilities.

12. NORAH

I am still hungry.

I am also still tired, and still vaguely interested in my future life of sainthood, but still. I gnaw. The stale Oreo I am munching in the cab, with the cookie part soggy instead of crisp, the white center near-gelatinous—like a room temperature ice cream sandwich—is brilliant, but not coming close to quelling this hunger. I’m not sure whether the gnawing is coming from my stomach or the Arctic vicinities around that area that, earlier, eerily melted under the greenhouse effect of Nick’s touch.

“Are we going or not?” the taxi driver asks me. We’ve sat through five rotations of the light at Houston and West Broadway while I decide where I want to go. The driver is putting up with my uncertainty because he’s hopeful I won’t follow through on my threat to either be driven to Jersey or file a formal complaint if he gives me any more shit about leaving the city.

“Where to, lady?”