“Russell?” I say.
“Mm-hmm?”
“Road trips—love or hate?”
“Love,” he says. “Before I got this gig, my sister and I were talking about driving across the country this summer. We still might do it next year. Why do you ask?”
“No reason. It’s a game someone taught me.”
“Oh, okay.” Russell’s quiet for a second, and I think that’s the end of it, but then he says, “Emo songs about how love is a lie and people always disappoint you—love or hate?”
I laugh; that’s a really good one, much more creative than anything Zoe or I ever came up with. “Most of the time, hate. But in that first week or so after a relationship ends, love. When you actually feel like love is a lie, there’s nothing like a good angsty song to validate you.”
“You don’t really think love is a lie, though, do you?”
Right now I think love is a big confusing snarl, but I say, “No, of course not.”
“Good. That would be a depressing way to live.”
“Looking at other people’s vacation photos, love or hate?”
“Fewer than fifty, love,” Russell says. “More than fifty, get over yourself, nobody cares. Marathoning a TV show you know is objectively bad but that you can’t seem to stop watching, even though you have no idea why—love or hate?”
“Hate. I have to take my guilty pleasures in small doses or it makes me feel gross. Like, I actually feel physically sticky.” Russell makes a snorting sound, and I say, “What?”
“I don’t believe in guilty pleasure,” he says.
“Oh, come on. Are you telling me there’s not one single thing you secretly love?”
“Of course there is. But I think that if you like something, you should just like it. You don’t need to apologize for it or explain yourself to anyone. Why should liking something make anyone feel guilty?”
“You’re right,” I say, and I wonder if he’s thinking about Olivier.
With Zoe, I was always satisfied playing this game with normal topics like amusement parks and sad books and the idea of having children. But Russell pushes me to come up with quirkier, funnier, more creative topics: guessing the killer right from the beginning of a mystery, sticking your hand out the window while you drive, that feeling of falling you get when you’re right on the edge of sleep. I had thought Zoe’s and my new version of Love or Hate was as good as the old way, but now that I’m playing this game with words again, I’m surprised by how much better I like it. Having someone really listen to me actually makes me feel closer than touching does.
When you start dating someone, people always say you’ve become “more than friends.” But now, as I laugh with Russell, I’m less sure that what Zoe and I have now is more than we had before.
I hear him roll toward me in the dark. “Hey, Brooklyn?”
“Yeah?”
“What are you doing tomorrow?”
I hadn’t planned to do much of anything besides sulking in my room and hoping Zoe came home early. “Nothing, really. Why?”
“I was thinking of driving around the Hudson Valley a little bit and checking out some of the other weird small towns around here. You want to come?”
“Is there a group going?”
“No, it would just be us.”
For a second I feel disloyal to Zoe for even thinking about it; first I’m playing our game with someone else, and now I’m considering spending my day off alone with Russell. But she’s the one who should feel guilty; she’s across campus having sex with someone else right now while I’m having an innocent pajama party with my gay friend.
“That sounds really fun,” I say. “I’d love to.”
“Great. Maybe we could grab breakfast at Kayla’s first? I’ve been meaning to try their scones.”
I tell him I can’t wait, and for a few minutes, I’m proud of myself. If Zoe gets to have fun without me, I get to have fun without her, too. But as I try to fall asleep in an empty bed for the first time in eight days, I can’t help missing her.
The next morning is bright and sunny, and Russell and I pick a random direction and set off down the highway. We stop in every town we pass and investigate the weird little shops—the one that sells knives carved from animal bones, the bookstore full of tomes about conspiracy theories, the antiques shop with the dresses that were supposedly owned by Audrey Hepburn. We buy a baguette and some cheeses with fancy names and have a picnic next to a half-dry creek. We play Love or Hate. We think up titles for silly Shakespeare-musical mash-ups, like A Midsummer Night’s Dreamgirls and The Lion King Lear and Thoroughly Modern Macbeth. Russell tells me you can write a thirty-five-mile-long line with the average pencil and that it’s illegal to burp inside a church in Nebraska. When we get back to Allerdale in the evening, we grab dinner at Sammy’s and spend a couple of hours messing around on one of the practice room pianos.