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I watch him understand. I don’t know how to describe it except that something in his face goes very still and then very quiet. Not pity. He’d never look at me with pity, and I’d never forgive him if he did. It’s more like watching somebody find the last piece of a puzzle they didn’t know they were doing. His eyes go back to the conveyor belt. To the one sweet potato. Then back to me.

He knows now. That I don’t hate my family. That I don’t have nowhere to go. That I didn’t pick staying here because I like it.

I just can’t afford to go twice.

I want to disappear. I want to grab my bag, run out of the store, and leave the sweet potato behind because he has no idea what it means to not afford something that you want. He stood in a stairwell three weeks ago and offered me a year’s rent like it was nothing, and I know what he’s going to do now. He’s going to reach for his wallet. He’s going to say I’ll pay for the bus, or I’ll pay for the flight, or how much, and make it a thing, and I’m going to have to stand in the checkout line at the market on Main Street and say no to his money in front of a cashier and a sweet potato.

The cashier says, “Twenty-three sixteen.”

I hand her my card.

Rafe looks at me for one more second.

“Okay,” he says. And he walks away. He takes his Gatorade and his jerky to the next register over and puts them on the belt, and he doesn’t look back.

I stand there with my receipt.

He didn’t do it. He didn’t reach for his wallet. He didn’t offer me anything. He didn’t make it a thing. I walk out of the store with my bag of groceries, and I’m so angry.

I watch him through the window of the bus pulling out of the parking lot. He’s loading the Gatorade into the back of his car. He doesn’t look up.

I feel ridiculous. I feel completely ridiculous. I’m furious at Rafferty Waleska for behaving exactly the way I expected him to. I don’t know why I thought the new Rafe would be polite or considerate. I’m well-aware that I’m starting to think too highly of him. He doesn’t owe me anything.

In the hallway that evening, on our way out to dinner, when Kylie says Thursday, I feel him look at me twice from his doorway. Just quick. Just glances.

The five of us get dinner. Kylie, Paige, Kenzie, Bianca, and me, at the diner with the cracked red booths, because Kylie says it’s tradition now and we’ve done it exactly once. Kenzie’s flight is at six in the morning, and she’s already panicking about it. Bianca’s driving home with her brother tomorrow and has already planned which gas station they’re stopping at for snacks. Paige is taking the train and refuses to talk about her family at all except to say that her aunt is “a lot” and that she’ll be drinking wine in the garage by five o’clock Thursday.

We talk about awful relatives and what everybody’s mom makes and whether canned cranberry sauce is a crime. Kenzie says it is. I say it’s the best part of the meal, the jellied kind with the ridges still on it, and Kenzie looks at me like I just confessed to a murder, and Paige says, “Tessa’s right,” and that settles it.

“What about you?” Bianca asks me, reaching for a fry. “When do you leave?”

“I’m staying here.”

I say it easily, because I’ve already decided it’s easy. I wait for the pause. The little tilt of everybody’s heads. The oh, Tess.

“Honestly?” Paige says, without missing a beat. “That sounds peaceful as hell. Can I stay with you?”

Kenzie starts talking about her layover. Nobody looks at me with that face. Nobody makes it sad. I could hug Paige for it, and I don’t, because Paige would hate that.

Later, walking back, Kylie hooks her arm through mine and pulls me a little behind the others.

“Come home with me,” she says. “I’m serious. My mom would love you. She makes too much food anyway. We have a guest room nobody uses.”

I love her for it. I really do. I feel it go all the way through me. But I can already see it. Her mom at the door, being kind. Her mom asking where my family is, gently, the way people ask. Everybody being so careful with me all weekend. Being the girl at somebody else’s table, the one they took in, the one they made an extra plate for. I’ve been that girl. I don’t want to be her anymore.

“I can’t,” I say. “But thank you. Really.”

She looks at me for a second. I watch her want to push.

And then she doesn’t.

“Okay,” she says, and squeezes my arm. “But I’m calling you on Thursday, and you’re going to answer.”

“I’ll answer.”

And she lets it go, which is surprising given it’s Kylie, and she never lets anything go.

Back at Corvin, my groceries are sitting in the communal fridge in the kitchen on our floor with a sticky note on top that says TESSA — DO NOT TOUCH — I KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE, because Kylie wrote it. The hallway is half empty. Somewhere on four, somebody’s playing music too loud, and then they stop, and the building goes quiet in that new way, the everyone-has-somewhere-to-go way.