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He says, “We’re not even, is the problem. It’s not fair if you call it off while we’re not even.”

Breathe.

I say, “So what do you want.”

“Well, I don’t fucking know, Morgan. Some appreciation might be a great start.”

Okay. I can do this long enough to make it out in one piece.

I struggle to make eye contact, but I make it. “Thank you for your help. I’ve really appreciated it.”

“Thank you. Was that so hard?” He sounds like Mom, like Dad, like every son of a bitch I’ve ever had to survive. “Now, as nice as that was to hear, turns out that thank you doesn’t really cut it. Still feel like it’s unbalanced here. Do you have any ideas?”

Yes.

I do.

I don’t like it, but. Fuck. I don’t have anything else. There are no other options here. Nothing else I can give him that won’t ruin me for the rest of my life.

I think it’s my only way out.

I summon every dreg of strength I have left. Hold my head a little higher. Put together each remaining piece of my shattered mask and find the deadpan-cool-girl persona I decided on during our time in the basement theater.

“How many times have you called me pretty?” I ask.

Daniel shakes his head, almost flinching back. “Are you threatening me?”

“No. Why the fuck would I do that.” I hold up my free hand in a show of ease, or maybe surrender. “I’m just saying. You have a crush on me.”

“You’re interesting.”

Translation from nonautistic into autistic: Yes, I do, but it’s socially unacceptable and borderline criminal to use that wording.

“If I let you do something about it,” I say, “would that make us even?”

Daniel looks at me for a moment too long.

Then he straightens up and walks to the cabinets in his tiny kitchen. “I’ll get us something to drink.”

The dark liquid in the glass makes me queasy. I can’t stop thinking about Mom in her robe and hair towel, slumped in front of her hangover breakfast. The wall of wine bottles in the pantry, the liquor cabinets on every level of the town house, Mom stumbling home reeking of fermentation.

Sometimes Mom blames me for it. Says she wouldn’t drink if not for me.

I stare at the glass.

I want to down it. I also want to dump it down the sink.

Daniel pours himself a finger of bourbon, too. He sips his gingerly. He refuses to sit, standing over me, still blocking my path to the door like there’s any chance I could run in this state.

In the harsh lighting of his studio apartment, he looks washed out, like the saturation on his skin’s been turned up too high in Photoshop. I can see all the little imperfections that I usually pick out on myself: an acne scar on the cheek, dry skin by his eyebrow. There’s a dimple at the edge of his mouth that reminds me of when he suggested we watch A Serbian Film. Like he knows something I don’t, and he likes it.

I’m not allowed to be disgusted, though. Haven’t I been provoking him all this time? Or encouraging it. Or whatever words Dad’s lawyers tried to use for the version of Cordelia that existed in their heads. I’m as much to blame for this as he is. Sending him selfies, showing skin, touching his hand and leaning in.

“And you won’t cry wolf,” Daniel says. “You won’t turn this around on me?”

“I won’t.”

For a moment, I’m sitting across from Dad in the Box again. I’m clawing through a shutdown, practically out of my mind, alone with an adult man.