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“Well—of course. You two became very serious, very quickly. You can understand how there was a little whiplash, hearing about this guy you despised and then suddenly you were bringing him home and telling us he was your boyfriend.” At this, my face grows warm. “We’re just wondering… if maybe now isn’t the best time to be tying yourself down.”

I pause with a forkful of plant-based al pastor halfway to my mouth. There’s no way she’s saying what I think she’s saying, but I have to make sure. “I’m lost. Are you telling me to cheat on my boyfriend?”

Her eyes go wide behind her glasses. “No! My goodness. We would never—no,” she affirms, brushing this off with a strained little laugh. “Just that you’re going to be meeting so many new people here, people from all over, with all kinds of different backgrounds. I don’t want you to feel like Neil is holding you back from any of it, and not just romantically. I want you to have the best four years here, and it might be tough if you’re constantly running back to your dorm for a scheduled video call or using your weekends to go to New York instead of spending time with friends here.”

I let those words sink in. Sure, in the back of my mind those fears have prodded at me, too. But I’ve always dismissed them. We were living in the moment this summer, which made those fears feel like wasted time.

“Being with Neil doesn’t mean I can’t have fun here at Emerson.” There’s an edge to my voice, a tone I’m not used to taking with either of my parents. A twinge of annoyance, a clench of my jaw. “I’m not going to be locked in my room the whole time on the phone with him. You should know I’m not the kind of person to let a relationship get in the way of school. I think I made that pretty clear in high school.”

“I know that. You’re a smart girl. But things are different now, with you being out here on your own,” she says. “This is your education. Your future. It’s the most important thing in the world, even if it doesn’t feel that way.”

Now that twinge deepens, an unfamiliar frustration tightening my chest. I can’t believe we’re having this conversation. “Mom. I know. Did I not demonstrate that for the past four years, even when I was dating other people?” My mom and I have never snipped at each other, not like this, and it makes me even more eager to end this conversation. Criticism from my parents has never felt quite this personal before. “I’ve worked too hard to get here. Neil doesn’t change any of that.”

“We just don’t want you to get too in your head. You know—with all the books you read. You don’t have to settle down quite yet. That’s all we’re saying.”

It’s a not-so-subtle jab at my genre of choice, something they’ve only recently become aware of. For years, I hid my love of romance novels, worried both friends and family would judge me. My parents have mostly been accepting, even taking a couple book recommendations, but every so often, I get the sense that they wish I loved something else.

If this really is all they’re saying, then why do I feel like they might actually mean so much more?

My mom’s staying in a hotel nearby and flies back tomorrow, and I don’t want to end the trip on this note. But when she asks if I want to catch one of the move-in-week comedy shows, I lie and tell her I’m too tired, that I want to make sure I have all my energy for tomorrow’s freshmen orientation.

The rest of the night, as I play Cards Against Humanity with some other freshmen in the eighth-floor lounge, Greta from Los Angeles and Minato from Tokyo and Ben from “just down the road in Quincy,” as Paulina never shows up and I grow marginally worried about her and Neil texts me photos he’s sneakily taken of his roommate’s questionable taste in posters, I turn over my mom’s words. And I make a promise to myself.

As much as I love him, I won’t let having a boyfriend keep me from the full college experience. I don’t want to put our relationship on a pedestal behind unbreakable glass, but there’s a happy medium here. We’re good together, and I’d be an idiot to give that up just because we don’t live in the same city.

There’s no reason I can’t have both.

ROWAN

tell me again why I registered for a class that starts at 8 a.m.?

NEIL

Because you’ve wanted to study creative writing for years and you couldn’t miss an opportunity to learn from this professor?

ROWAN

ughhhhh. past rowan was an absolute menace

NEIL

A cute menace.

ROWAN

are you trying to seduce me?

4

NEIL

THERE ARE FEW things I love more than the beginning of a school year, new binders and crisp notebooks and sharpened pencils all holding that promise of possibility.

In high school, September also meant Rowan Roth, the girl who tormented me all year and yet I inexplicably—and then all-too-explicably—missed during the summer break.

My family always bought school supplies at a dollar store or drugstore clearance aisle, though we reused as much as we could from year to year. But every August, my mom would bring us to the Office Depot in Ballard because she knew just how much I loved it.

“You can pick one thing,” she’d say, while my dad grumbled about how it should be illegal to charge that much for a ballpoint pen. If he was even there—sometimes he’d complain he was too tired and stay in bed. My mom added the stipulation, “Anything you want, as long as it’s under twenty dollars,” after I tried to exploit the vagueness of “pick anything you want” to get an ergonomic office chair I definitely did not need when I was nine.