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I stop at the top of the stairs with my mailers tucked against my chest and watch a mother reach up to fix her son’s hood before he gets into the car. He pulls away from her hand immediately. She does it again. He lets her. Then they leave.

Another car pulls into the spot before theirs is even gone.

By dinner, half the floor sounds different.

And since last night, Rafe’s been weird. I can’t explain it better than that. It isn’t anything he does. It’s that he keeps almost doing things. On my way back from the post office, I pass him coming out of the stairwell, and he opens his mouth like he’s going to say something, and then he closes it and keeps walking. Later, I’m about to text the girls’ group chat when I notice his thread has the three dots. I open it. It says Rafferty Waleska is typing, for a long time, and then it stops, and nothing comes. I stare at his name and wonder if he was going to text me on purpose or if it’s something else.

I can’t read him. I’ve been able to read him since I was fourteen, every color of his eyes, every shift in his jaw. And since last night, I have no idea what he’s thinking.

I hate it. I hate it so much I reorganize my entire closet.

Then I take the bus to the market on Main Street and plan Thanksgiving. Not ramen. If I’m doing it, I’m doing it properly.

I get a box of stuffing, the cheap kind in the red box that you make on the stove in five minutes, because it’s my favorite stuffing in the world. A can of cranberry sauce, the jellied kind, ridges and all. One sweet potato, a big one, and a bag of mini marshmallows, because my grandma makes them with marshmallows on top every year, and I think I can do it in the little oven in the Corvin kitchen if nobody’s burned anything in it lately. A container of rotisserie turkey breast from the deli counter, already sliced. A single slice of pumpkin pie in a plastic clamshell. A can of whipped cream for the pie, and for eating straight from the can after. A bag of the good coffee, the kind I never buy, because it’s a holiday.

The nice thing about feeding one person is that nobody gets to complain about what you make.

I’m standing in the checkout line doing the math on it, which comes to twenty-three dollars and sixteen cents, when I catch the same height, same hair color, same scent as Rafe.

I look up.

He’s holding a case of Gatorade on one shoulder and a bag of beef jerky in his other hand. It must be road trip supplies. He looks at me, then he looks down at the conveyor belt at all my things.

My heart starts pounding. I want to ask him what he’s doing here, but I don’t think he’d admit to watching my location. I think I have to let this one go and see if he’s going to say anything to me.

I watch him judge what’s on the conveyor belt, all of it, in order. The stuffing. The one potato. The single slice of pie. Me, standing in a grocery store two days before Thanksgiving, buying Thanksgiving dinner for one.

I want to fall through the floor.

“Stop, please,” I say nicely, wishing I had checked his location earlier.

He looks up. “I didn’t say anything.”

“Your eyes did.”

The cashier starts ringing me up. The sweet potato rolls slowly down the belt toward him like it’s doing it on purpose.

“You’re really staying,” he says.

It isn’t a question. I answer it anyway.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

So, he does want to know?

I grab the sweet potato.

“Because I’m going home for Christmas,” I say.

He looks at me. I can feel him working through it, turning it over, looking at it from every side.

“You can’t do both,” he says. Not mean. Not mocking. It’s clearly a question but he doesn’t make it sound like one.

My whole body goes stiff because he didn’t need to ask why.

“No,” I say.