I was good at this. Too good. At bedtime Davis had no questions about what was bothering me or the dive I’d purely invented. I lay awake for a long time after he fell asleep. I felt sick with guilt, and I was glad of it. Roux, in my position, would sleep as sweetly as Oliver. She was making me a better liar, but she couldn’t make me like it.

By four I was up, layering a light cotton dress over a flowery tankini, dressed as if I really were heading to a dive. Even my clothes were lies, and worse, I was sneaking out to meet Tig Simms. Again. The last time I’d done this, it had ended so, so poorly. That thought nearly shut me down.

Before the sun rose, I was close enough to Mobile Bay to smell the salt. I wished I could keep driving, straight in and under. Down where it was quiet and blue and no one knew my name. Seven years ago I’d started down this highway so many times. At first I couldn’t even make it out of Florida. As the weeks passed, I’d pushed closer, but I’d never once gotten past the Baldwin Beach exit. There had been a quarter century’s worth of shame blocking my way.

This time? I gunned it, racing toward Restoration Garage with my foot heavy on the gas, though I had no idea what I would find. I couldn’t let the complicated swamp of feelings that were choking me slow me down.

Restoration was on a quiet county road, a long, low building covered in green corrugated metal siding. There was a chain-link fence running all the way around it, with a roll of barbed wire at the top. It had a gate with a keypad, but I didn’t know the code, and it was dark inside.

Tig’s house was on the property, too. I remembered that from when I’d paid off his mortgage. It was a small, red brick ranch outside the fence. I followed a fork in the gravel drive down to it. An old Mustang was parked in front, a low-slung beast of a car, deep blue and gleaming. I parked behind it.

The house had no porch and no awning, just a concrete pad, and no lights were on. I crossed the lawn, wet with morning dew, and though the air was warm and humid, I was shivering. The back of my throat felt sour with remembered wine. I’d imagined coming to this very place so many times, but not under these circumstances. Never in this mood. The shame and sorrow I expected—deserved—were present, but laid over with a thousand other feelings.

I lifted a shaking hand to press the doorbell, and it chimed obligingly. I waited, but the house stayed dark and silent. The Tig I’d known was a night person, but how much of that Tig was left? As a kid he’d stayed up late, sometimes all night, especially if the moon was full. Those were the nights he’d come to ping rocks off my window, whisper-calling up, I need a pork chop. Right now the moon was a fat disk hung low in the lightening sky, barely on the wane. A sliver was missing from its edge. Did a moon this full still make him hungry, steal his rest? He could be out now, roaming.

I pressed it again. Twice. After thirty seconds I banged on the door itself, and a light came on. My hands dropped and began twisting together in front of me. I had to press them together to make them stop.

I thought, perhaps foolishly, that all I needed was to see him and I would know. A quarter of a century had passed, but there was no love like first love. I’d lost a thousand hours studying his face, tracing its planes and angles. I knew what every muted feeling looked like as it crossed his features. If he’d sent her, then his deep green eyes would narrow, the lids pulling up from the bottom. He would press his lips together. His thumbs would worry at his knuckles.

And if he hadn’t, what face would he make? What would he feel when he saw me on his porch?

This I could not imagine.

I could hear footsteps padding toward me. Closer and closer. I think I stopped breathing. The door swung open, creaking loud on its hinges.

He was still in the process of pulling on a shirt, and I caught a glimpse of a tattoo as the cloth dropped over his abdomen. It was a plain white tee, the kind of thing Davis would only wear under a button-down. Tig was still wire thin, so his ancient pajama bottoms rode low, hanging off his hip bones. They were banana-colored, covered in tiny cartoon monkeys, too silly for the occasion. His familiar face was creased with sleep. His hair was the same, a halo of crazy corkscrews shooting out in all directions. The light behind him caught the bronze, and I saw there was some silver in it now, too.

He scrubbed at his eyes, then met my gaze.

There was nothing there. Not even irritation at being jerked from sleep. Just a pleasant, mild politeness.

“Gate stuck again, or did you forget the code?” he asked, then blinked at me, as if trying to remember my name. “Do you— I’m sorry. It’s really early. Do you have a bay here?”

He didn’t know me. Not at all.

“Tig,” I said, and stopped. I just looked at him, helpless.

He blinked at the sound of my voice. It was like watching him wake up again.

“Smiff?” he said at last. “Smiffy, is that you?”

I tilted my chin up. “Hey.”

He shook his head, a little disbelieving, or maybe shaking the last sleep away. Then he stepped to me, so fast it caught me off guard. My hands came up, defensive, but he bowled into me, wrapping his arms around me, squeezing me so tight. My own arms were trapped between us, and I thought he might be laughing. I snaked them out, wound them tight around his body. He lifted me up off the ground for a second, my feet dangling, then bent, still holding me, until I touched down. My face was pressed into his chest, and he smelled the same, exactly like Tig, a little pot smoke and a little copper in his tang.

“Shit, Smiffy. Look at you. What, you need a waffle?” he said into my hair. Just as if it were a thousand years ago and we’d been up all night rocking it as Ragweed. As if dawn were nigh and we were played out and hungry and had school in half an hour.

In his arms I understood how desperately I wanted to believe that he was not in league with her. Surely if I were his mark, he would have recognized me? He couldn’t be working with her. I wanted it to be true so badly I didn’t trust myself.

“No, I’m good,” I said. My voice came out as creaky as his door.

Finally he pushed me back, arm’s length, his eyes searching my face like he was hungry for the sight of me. “Jesus. You still look just like you.”

I shook my head, old shames at war inside me. “I do not. I’m a couple of decades older. And there’s a hundred pounds or so less of me.”

“Yeah, but you still—” He stopped, seeking the words. “I don’t know how to say it. You look like you. You’re you.” He grinned, as if this were a good thing, hands still so warm on my shoulders, staring at me so long and with such pleasure that it almost got weird. He felt it, too. He must have, because he dropped his hands, laughing, and said, “Shit, come in. I shoulda— I’m sorry. I was asleep. You want some coffee? I need coffee.”

He swung the door open wide, but I stayed where I was, eyes welled up, shaking so hard I was shocked my teeth weren’t chattering.

“Why are you happy to see me?” I asked.

He blinked, shook his head. “Aw, Smiff. I’ve wanted to see you for a long, long time. So bad. I should have come to you. I know that. It was on me. Please, come in.”

He led me into a little living room, and it was a very Tig space. The Tig of old. Messy but not dirty, with books everywhere, double-stuffed into built-in shelves and in tall stacks near the fireplace and the couch. A Leatherman sat on a short stack of National Geographics, sharing the coffee table with a water pipe and two more books, both open facedown to keep their place. A single lamp gave off a mellow, golden glow. The sofa and a couple of chairs were crammed into half the room to accommodate a drum kit, two big amps and a baby one, and five guitar stands. The one on the end held Tig’s ancient Fender. I would have known it anywhere.

The kitchen was a small, dark square on the other side, separated from the den by a breakfast bar. Tig went around it, not bothering to turn more lights on, and I slid onto a stool. A Bunn coffeemaker waited on the counter with a plastic pitcher full of water, premeasured, right beside it. He poured the water, and within a couple of seconds coffee started streaming through.

“You’re serious about it, huh?” I’d only seen that kind of coffee machine in diners, never in someone’s house.

“Cut me. I bleed black,” he said.

Looking around, I didn’t think any woman lived here, least of all Roux, with her silk dressing gowns and Picasso sketches. She might go slumming here, like she was at the Sprite House, but nothing I could see was hers.

I checked his hands. No wedding ring. His knuckles were smudged with ink or grease. He saw me looking and grinned, then came close and fisted them for me, holding them up so I could see the remains of old, old tattoos. The jailhouse kind, and I felt my throat get thick. Simple block letters, one per finger, showed faintly on his fists. l o v e, his right hand said. I had to squint to read the left one.

“‘Love . . . Cake’?” I said, smiling in spite of all the history in the room.

“Yeah. It’s a joke. You know, like how bad-ass men get ‘Love/Hate’ tats on their hands.”