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It’s impossible to miss the slight disdain in his voice, as if he already knows I won’t be making anything of myself, as if he already knows that I’m never going to get this degree—one he clearly considers worthless anyhow.

“I’ve been thinking about moving to LA,” I reply. It feels like a lie—it’s not as if I seriously thought about it. It was a dream, not so different from my dreams of attending Hogwarts when I was small. But maybe the only difference between a dream and a plan is how committed you are to making it happen. “Once I save enough money, I mean. What I’d really like to do is sing.”

Luke’s gaze meets mine. His eyes blaze with something…hopeful?

“But, Juliet, you don’t have to go all the way to LA to do that,” Donna says, a hint of desperation in her voice. “You can stay right here. Get a degree in music and teach at the high school.”

I picture it: me in a beige skirt and cheap flats, leading a bunch of apathetic teens through scales and tepid acapella versions of pop songs.

“That is an excellent idea,” says Mr. Tomlinson.

They think LA is a childish dream, one that will leave me homeless, playing guitar on a street corner and begging for change.

“She doesn't want to teach,” Luke says between his teeth. “She wants to sing.” He stares at his plate, but it feels like his anger is directed at Donna, the last person who deserves it.

“They’re right,” I say quietly, because I can’t stand to hear Donna criticized, even subtly. “LA is probably a pipe dream. I need a back-up plan.”

Donna smiles and reaches out to cover my hand with hers, rewarding me for saying the right thing. It’s a little pat on the head, and like the child I am, I relish it.

Except…Luke was right. And if I were braver, if I were brave like him, I would have told them all the truth.

Later that night, after Tomlinson is gone and the kitchen is clean, Danny and I sit on the front porch, alone for the first time all day. “Did you realize your mom assumes you’ll move to Central America with them?” I ask.

He shrugs. I guess that’s a yes. “I mean, it’s not like I’m gonna play pro ball. It might be okay, you know? My mom wants to open a school there too. It’ll take a while, but eventually…I could teach business and you could teach music. We wouldn’t have a lot of money, but I don’t guess we’d need it, either. Everything’s cheap down there, and we could probably grow a lot of our own food.”

I stare at him. The life he’s describing is plucked straight from a children’s cartoon, the kind where coconuts fall from the sky when you’re hungry and bananas rain down by the barrel. Kids in some third-world village aren’t going to want to take fucking business classes or learn how to play “Jingle Bells” on a guitar.

“Danny…I’m not sure I want to teach. I think I want to perform. Like, create my own stuff.”

“You know how many people want that and fail?” he asks. “There are lots of ways you can perform without moving to LA, but the odds of you going there and it all working out are probably worse than your odds of winning the lottery.”

I don’t argue with him because he’s right. But I also know Luke would say that if I want to play the lottery, I should fucking play the lottery, because it’s my life, not Danny’s.

* * *

“I just seated you,” says Stacy. “He asked for your section.”

My head jerks toward the tables in the corner, to where Luke is sitting by himself, his hair still damp from a morning in the water.

He’s studying the menu, and something about the sight of him there, so big and alone, does a weird thing to my heart. It’s a tiny pinch of emptiness, but I sense an abyss somewhere beyond it, somewhere I don’t want to look.

I’d assume he was in my section by accident if I hadn’t been told otherwise.

His gaze lands on me as I approach, in that way it always does, as if I’m something deadly he can’t allow out of his sight. Not a single muscle in his face moves otherwise. No smile, no hint of anything. Just those eyes of his, always watching.

“Hey,” I say, swallowing my nerves. I lean my hip against the table, the only hint that he isn’t a regular customer. I want to thank him for taking up for me the other night, and I want to apologize for what I said in response. It’s just all locked up in my throat.

He looks back at the menu. “What’s good?”

This is so weird. Why are you here, Luke? Why are you in my section when you mostly seem to wish I was elsewhere? I don’t voice my questions, mostly because there’s some strange part of me that doesn’t want him to leave. That wants the next twenty or thirty minutes to just gaze at him, big shoulders hunched over as he wolfs down a solitary meal.

“All of it if you like meat and potatoes,” I reply. “None of it if you hope to live past fifty.” I give him a nervous grin.

He doesn’t offer one back, but instead continues to stare at the menu. “The number four, please.”

“Coffee?”

He shakes his head. “Water’s fine.”