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Christmas is horrible. Lily and her boyfriend are awful, Paul is obnoxious, my mother is clingy, and my father barely says

a word to me beyond asking if I’ve finished my business school applications.

I have to create an account with the application system when I finally sit down to do them, which means logging into my e-mail

for the first time in months. I try to click in and out of my inbox without seeing anything, but my eyes snag on an e-mail

from my old F2 team boss, Carl. It’s weeks old, and tells me that Estefan Ribiero has signed with them for the next two years.

He adds that things might have been different “if I’d kept in closer contact” and that they might be open to re-engaging with

me down the road, “depending on the results of my recovery.” The tone is polite, but the meaning couldn’t be clearer. I’ve

been replaced. They don’t want me anymore.

The rest of the holiday passes by in a haze of misery, each day a little more miserable than the last. I don’t sleep.

I barely eat. There’s a constant tightness in my chest, like a string being pulled tighter and tighter, and if I don’t talk to someone who isn’t in my immediate family, I think I’m going to snap.

At nine a.m. on January fifth, the first business day after the holidays and my fourth day running on two hours of sleep,

I pick up the phone and make an appointment with Amanda.

She looks a bit cautious as I sit down on her couch the following day. “I was surprised to get your call,” she says.

I nod stiffly. “Thank you for seeing me.”

“You don’t have to thank me, Jacob. I’m here to help.”

I make a vague noise. “Yeah, well. I’ve been a dick to you.”

“Well, yes,” she agrees. “But you’ve been through a lot.”

I force a thin smile.

“So?” she says. “What made you book an appointment?”

I pick at my thumbnail. I’m already half regretting the decision. “I don’t know. I had a shitty break.”

“How so?”

I shift on the couch. “You just want me to jump right into it?”

Amanda leans forward. “Jacob,” she says. “Look at me.” Reluctantly, I meet her eyes. Her stupid smile is gone, and her gaze

is even. “I am not your friend or your family member. We don’t need to exchange social niceties. You are here for therapy.

You made this appointment for a reason. Didn’t you?”

I look away from her, give a tiny nod.

“So?” she says. “What was it?”

I shift again. I feel like I’m sitting under a spotlight. “I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do.”

I glare at her. “I don’t know, alright? I couldn’t sleep, I guess.”

“Why couldn’t you sleep?”

“If I knew that, I wouldn’t be here, would I?” I snap.

She doesn’t say anything in response, just raises an eyebrow like she knows that I’m lying.

Which... I guess I am.

“I am not your friend,” she says again. “I am not your family. Pardon my language, but I don’t give a damn what you tell me.

Within these four walls, you can say anything you’d like. But we’ll be a lot more productive if you stop arguing and start

being honest.”

I open my mouth instinctively on another argument, then reluctantly shut it again.

I guess she has a point.

Still, I have to swallow a few times before I can push the words out. “My ex won the F1 championship,” I mutter.

“Your ex,” she repeats. Then, with a faint air of surprise, “An ex-boyfriend, you mean?”

I shrug. “I don’t know. We were... together, I guess, last year.”

“?‘Together, I guess,’?” she repeats. “What does that mean?”

I shrug again. “I don’t know.”

“Okay.” She leans back in her chair. The silence stretches out, itchy and uncomfortable. “Tell me about him,” she says.

“Like what,” I say irritably.

“Well, what’s his name?”

“Travis.”

Travis Keeping. Champion of the world .

“What else?” I ask in a brittle voice, when Amanda just nods.

“Whatever you’d like,” she says. “As long as it’s the truth.”

I look at my hands. The truth. The truth, the truth, the truth.

Fuck. Why is this so hard?

“What’s he like?” Amanda prompts me.

“I don’t know.” I clear my throat. “Nice.”

She lets out a surprised snort of laughter, then covers her mouth with her hand. “Sorry.”

My mouth turns up a bit. I guess it was sort of a stupid answer. I swallow and try again. “He’s... kind of quiet, I guess.”

She nods. “Okay.”

I pick at my thumbnail again. “He’s, like, a recluse, practically. I mean, he’s supposed to be this huge F1 star, but he’d

never even dated anyone before me. And he doesn’t have any family or friends or anything.”

“Sounds lonely.”

I frown. “I guess. I don’t know. I think he was fine with it.”

She tilts her head. “What made you decide to date him?”

I shrug one shoulder roughly. “I didn’t decide to date him. We just started hooking up.”

She raises an eyebrow. “So it was just sex?”

I grind my jaw together. Fuck, but I want to stop talking about this. “I don’t know. At first, yeah.”

“And then what happened?”

I look at my hands. Memories I’ve been trying to ignore since the crash are slipping intrusively into my mind. Travis sitting

next to me at the end of that hike in Scotland, taking off his jacket to put around my shoulders. Travis lying next to me

in bed, tracing his fingertips over my skin. Travis kissing me in the hospital and asking me not to die.

“I don’t know,” I say.

“It seems like it’s hard for you to talk about him.”

I shrug. “What’s the point? We broke up.”

“When?”

“Right after the crash.”

“Did he break up with you?”

I shake my head. “I broke up with him.”

The look on his face when I did it flashes in the front of my mind. I’d never seen him look like that, not even when one of

the dogs he used to walk from the animal shelter died.

“Why?” Amanda asks.

I pick at a stray thread on my jeans. “I don’t know,” I say again.

I’m not deflecting this time. I really don’t know. When I think back on the breakup, it’s all so fucking blurry. All I remember

is how mad I was, and how much I hated him. He fucked everything up. Everything.

“What are you thinking, Jacob?”

I open my mouth and the words just slip out. “He had no fucking right to tell my parents about us.”

Her eyebrows lift. “He told your parents that you two were together?”

“Yes.” My anger spills into the word. “Or—I mean, I don’t know if he, like, sat them down and told them, or whatever, but

he showed up in the hospital after the accident and made it fucking obvious.”

“Your parents didn’t know that you were gay?”

“I’m not gay,” I snap.

“Bisexual, then? Or pansexual?”

I roll my eyes. “I don’t even know what that means. I like women. And I’m not like, pretending , before you start getting on me. I’m way more into girls than guys. And I only ever date women.”

“So, you weren’t dating Travis.”

Uncomfortable heat rises to my face. “No. I mean... not officially.” My chest twists guiltily as I say it, which is stupid.

Whatever we were, it’s over now.

“Did he think you were dating?” Amanda asks.

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

Definitely , counters a voice in the back of my mind.

“Hm.” Amanda taps her pen thoughtfully against her clipboard. I wonder what she’s written on there. This guy is a total prick , probably. “You seem very angry with him.”

“Yeah, well. He fucking ruined everything,” I mumble.

She nods. “It sounds like he was a very selfish person.”

I open my mouth to argue with her—I didn’t say he was selfish, she isn’t listening at all—then I hesitate. She’s watching

me closely, her expression bland.

I give her a flat look. “You’re trying reverse psychology? Really?”

She cracks a smile. “It’s a classic for a reason.”

I snort. “Yeah, well. Fine. He wasn’t selfish.”

“No?”

I shake my head. It’s probably the last word I would use to describe Travis. “He still shouldn’t have told my parents about

us,” I say. But the words sound more feeble this time.

“Hm.” She taps her pen again, watching me. “We have about twenty minutes left,” she says. “I’m going to go make myself a cup

of tea. I want you to sit here and make a list. Five things you liked about Travis, and five things you didn’t.”

“Like—write it down?” I say warily.

“No. Just sit here and think about it. Five specific, concrete things that you liked about Travis, and five specific things

that you didn’t. You don’t have to tell me what they are. And you can leave as soon as you’re done.”

“I’m paying you for the full hour, though, right?”

“Your parents’ insurance company is paying me for the full hour, yes,” she says sweetly.

It almost makes me laugh. Fair enough.

“You can book another appointment on your way out, if you’d like,” she says.

The door closes behind her, and I’m left alone.

I stare around the room. It’s nice enough, in a generic sort of way. Light gray walls. Squashy black chairs. A bookshelf on

one wall filled with old books I’m sure no one’s ever read. Plants in every corner. A single window with an opaque curtain.

I heave a sigh. I should really just leave. This feels like homework. Really cheesy, stupid homework. Obviously, there was

some stuff I liked about Travis. I wouldn’t have kept sleeping with him so long if there wasn’t. He was, like—

Nice. And hot.

Although I guess those aren’t really “specific” or “concrete.”

I shift in my chair. My stupid hip is twinging a bit.

It’s probably easier to start with the things I don’t like. Like that he told my fucking parents we were dating , without even asking me first.

I mean... I guess I was unconscious, so he couldn’t really ask me. But he should’ve just stayed the fuck away until I was

awake. It makes me feel all hot and cringey, just thinking about him at the hospital, sitting by my bed and, like, holding

my fucking hand or some shit.

Although I guess he was probably pretty freaked out that I was going to die. I guess it was really bad for the first couple

of weeks. The doctors here in Albuquerque kept saying what a miracle it was that I survived. Apparently my lungs were really

messed up, and my kidneys.

And like, if I had died, I guess it would’ve been really shit if Travis hadn’t been able to see me. I think I’d rather have died with him holding

my hand instead of, like, having Lily praying over me and Paul doing his “favorite son holding the family together” act.

But I didn’t die, did I? And Travis should’ve... known that.

I frown.

Okay, that doesn’t quite make sense. Obviously he couldn’t have known if I was going to die or not.

I sit there frozen for a minute until the obvious solution hits me. He should’ve told my parents we were just friends. That way, he could have been there in the hospital, but without messing everything up.

Although he probably couldn’t have pulled that off. He’s completely shit at lying, Travis. Like on my birthday last year,

when I asked if he cared if I went out with my friends instead of him. He said it was fine, but he had this hurt-puppy-dog

look on his face afterward, and he was so obviously pleased when I came home a bit early.

God, we had the best sex that night. He blew me in the shower, and then we fucked on the carpet in the hall on the way to

the bedroom. That’s how desperate we were, we literally couldn’t make it an extra twenty feet to the bed.

I guess that can go in the “things I liked” list. The sex was amazing. Like, embarrassingly good. I used to dig my fingernails

into my palms, just to pull myself out of it a bit.

That’s probably why I stayed with him so long, really, even when there was so much about him I obviously didn’t like.

Like how he always made me feel guilty for shit. That sim he bought me for Christmas, for example. I got him a present, I’ll

have you know. I told him I didn’t, but that was only because what I got him was so fucking stupid compared to his huge, expensive,

basically-asking-me-to-move-in-with-him gift. I don’t know what he was thinking, buying it. Did he really think we were going

to move in together? It’s like he lives on another planet, Travis. Like, F1 races in countries where it’s an actual crime to be gay. What was he planning to do, just skip half the races so he didn’t get stoned to death somewhere?

Probably. That would be just like him, if word had ever gotten out about us.

He would’ve shown up at the F1 press conference with his impassive face and monosyllabic answers and everyone probably just would’ve accepted it.

You can get away with shit, when you’re rich and successful and don’t have uptight parents and a judgmental sister and an arrogant asshole brother.

The door creaks open and I jump. Amanda looks surprised to see me sitting there.

“Sorry, Jacob. I do need the room for my next appointment.”

I glance at the clock. It’s been twenty minutes, somehow.

“Right.” I rise hastily. “Sorry.”

“How did it go?” she asks.

“Oh.” My cheeks grow hot. “I don’t know. Fine, I guess. The things I didn’t like, anyway. Didn’t make it to the other list.”

“Ah.” She smiles. “Well. Something to think about on the way home, then.” She steps back so I can get through the door. “Take

care, now.”