Page 9

Moscow, Idaho

F amily breakfast” is Kaylee’s conscious effort to maintain her bonds with her four best friends from APhi: Ava, Zoe, Katie, and Phoebe.

Kaylee is cooking in the little kitchen in her off-campus apartment at the Whites. The pan is sizzling as the pancakes she’s making turn golden brown. They look and smell delicious. She whips out her phone so she can document the moment with an Instagram post.

Helping Kaylee out in the kitchen is her boyfriend since middle school, Jack DuCoeur. Like Maddie, he came to UI mostly because he wanted to be with Kaylee.

Jack is living off campus in a house close to Kaylee with a bunch of his Beta Theta Pi fraternity brothers. He and Kaylee go to games together. They share custody of a goldendoodle, Murphy. She even includes Jack in her APhi Instagram posts. He’s family.

Everyone loves Jack. An Idaho all-state tennis player, he has strawberry-blond hair and freckles. In photos, he bears more than a passing resemblance to the Harry Potter character Ron Weasley, but in real life, he is considerably more handsome.

Jack is as quiet and calm as Kaylee is effervescent. He’s a rock for Kaylee as long as she wants one. And to be sure, her family and friends have always had the impression that Kaylee decides the tempo and terms of the relationship.

Recently, though, there have been small signs of trouble in paradise.

Kaylee’s been feeling an itch to do things on her own. Not because she wants to part from Jack but because she likes being independent.

“Jack, I need five hours to get ready,” Kaylee will tell him as she sits down at her vanity. That means he needs to go away. And he does.

Kaylee has a lot on her mind now that she’s finally won her freedom and is living off campus. She wants to travel, to experience the world, to learn what’s out there beyond Coeur d’Alene.

And she wants to make money. COVID helped expand her professional network online, and she’s made connections at Extreme Networks, an IT firm in Austin, Texas, doing work she’s interested in pursuing full-time.

Her dad and her brother are in IT, so it’s in the blood.

The job would require a big move—and probably leaving Jack behind.

If Jack is serious about her, he might have to play the long game and wait. Which is what he’s doing now as she flips pancake after pancake and piles them into a stack.

“Almost ready?” Jack asks her.

Kaylee pours more batter into the sizzling pan.

“It’ll be a little while.”