When Laney had asked me the same question, I told her it was Raphael. Then she had asked why, and I’d said that I think, deep down, I wanted to be him. He was the bad boy, the black sheep of the brotherhood. Laney had laughed, said that Logan was more suitable to be Raph. I’d agreed, but I hadn’t said that I was most like him. I’d said I wanted to be him. Some days I wanted to not care about anything, to not have the responsibility of being the oldest brother weighing on my shoulders. “You’re more like Leonardo. The leader. The one they all look to for help,” she’d said.

“Umm…” New Girl purses her lips, looks up at the ceiling, contemplates like I’ve just asked her the most complicated question in the world. “Michelangelo,” she finally says.

It’s 11:57.

“Michelangelo?” I ask. “Why?”

She giggles. “Because pizza?”

Laney’s favorite turtle was Donatello. “Because he’s so smart without being obnoxious about it, you know? He doesn’t make the others feel dumb for not getting it. And he’s stealth but not just in combat. In life. It’s like he’s invisible until the world needs to see him.” Fuck, she was amazing. I could’ve had amazing. Instead, I’m stuck with pizza.

11:58 and some asshole turns on the TV so we can all sit around and watch the clock tick down together.

“You want to go to your room or something?” New Girl asks. Her hand’s on my leg and I didn’t ask for it or want it there, but when my eyes meet hers, I see the desperation. She came to a party at a stranger’s house with her friend who’s with a guy that has a friend who (they all thought) would be willing to fuck her brains out and she came because she wants me to fuck her, to erase the memory of some guy that’s been haunting her dreams, her thoughts, day and night and I get it, New Girl. I really do.

“What’s your name?” I ask.

“Sandy.” Sandy/Sanders. Close enough. Because that’s who I’ll be thinking of when I’m deep inside her. Oh, the irony of it all. “So?” She blinks.

I sigh. “You not even going to ask what my name is?”

“I know your name. I just don’t really care.” Sandy is rad.

11:59, someone taps my shoulder and I look up to see Leo standing above us, phone in one hand, girl in the other. “It’s Laney.”

My apartment is too loud, too many people, too many drinks, and so I take the phone from him and I go out the front door, down the steps, and into the living room of the main house where it’s dark and it’s quiet and it’s still 11:59 when I bring the phone to my ear and whisper, “Donatello?”

It’s not as quiet where she is, but she still hears what I say and she laughs.

You get it, Lane. You’re not pizza.

“That was random,” she says.

“How’s the houseboat going?”

“I’m in bed in a room on the lowest level, in the dark, and I’ve puked four times and haven’t had a single thing to drink.”

I lean back on the couch and stare up at the ceiling, waiting for my heart to settle while I hear the countdown begin. From my apartment and through the phone, people shout ten, nine, eight… we ignore the counting, my favorite pastime, and when the fireworks begin to explode somewhere in the distance, she says, “How’s your night going?”

I ask, “Is Cooper there? Is he taking care of you?”

She sighs, and I wait, not giving her a response to her question because it matters as much as my name does for New Girl. “He’s up on the deck,” she says. “Is that what it’s called? A deck? I don’t know. He’s with his friends… I don’t know them. But they’re there, and he’s there, and…”

“And so you thought you’d call me because you’re lonely and you want to at least be with someone when the clock strikes midnight?” I’m too drunk to even contemplate how that comes out, but I hear her shift as if she’s rolling around in bed, and she’s sick, sea sick, and I told Cooper that, but it didn’t matter to him because she doesn’t matter to him like she matters to me.

“It’s not like that, Luke.”

It finally occurs to me that I’m holding on to two phones and she didn’t call mine, so I ask, “Why did you call Leo’s phone?”

She shifts again. “Cooper made me block your number.”

“Made you?”

“It’s not like that,” she says again.

I should’ve been Raphael, the bad boy, the black sheep. Maybe then she would’ve forgiven me like she hands out forgiveness to that asshole. “So what’s it like then? Explain it to me.”

“He just… he sees you as a threat. That’s all. Have you been trying to get hold of me? Did you need me for something?”

“No.” I sit up, look down at my phone. 12:02 and the bastard hasn’t even checked in on her. “I just needed you, Laney, and you’re drifting, far and deep into this guy’s web.”

“I feel sick,” she murmurs, and my anger fades.

“Did you take any pills for it?”

“Yeah. They help some. But I’m here all night and—” It’s suddenly silent on her end.

“Who are you talking to?” Cooper asks, his tone as dark as the room I’m sitting in.

I sit up, alert. But the call cuts off and I stare into the darkness, promise myself I won’t call back because I don’t want to make things worse—whatever that means—and so I sit and I stew over my feelings, my hurt, until I force myself to my feet. I don’t go back to my apartment, to my party, to New Girl. Instead, I climb the stairs to Lachlan’s room and I get into his bed. “Just one minute…” I whisper.

12:48 and a text comes through on Leo’s phone: Raphael was a rebel. Some even called him a lost cause. But you’re not lost, Lucas. In fact, most days I fear you’re still the center of my universe.

Chapter Twenty-One

LUCAS

School starts again, new year, new semester, new hope.

Cooper’s back at UNC, his penalty for fornicating with underage girls now over. Small price to pay for such huge fuck-ups but that’s what money means to the Kennedys. A tool, a simple way to navigate through life in the hopes of sheltering members of their family from the harsh, bright lights of reality.

I watch from a distance as Laney steps out of her car in baggy sweatpants and an even baggier sweatshirt, and I wonder if she hasn’t managed to go home and find clothes that actually fit her or if her boyfriend has “made” her start dressing in his clothes to warn off any threats, aka me.

We hadn’t spoken since her phone call New Year’s Eve, and I didn’t even think to try. I’m blocked, from her phone and from her life, and maybe it’s like the night she came to visit me on her eighteenth birthday and we talked about our first Non-Date. I question whether we see things differently. If we always have. Last year, I dated a girl—Bethany—who made an off-handed joke about Laney being a loner because she spent her free period on her own just outside the library, knitting. I ended the relationship the next day, and when Laney asked about the breakup, I told her Bethany had bad breath and kissing her was like licking the inside of a trash can. I knew I could lie and be as crass as I wanted because I knew Laney would never repeat what I said to anyone. She’s always been a key holder to all my secrets. But now she’s dating a guy who treats me and our friendship like shit, and she makes excuses for him. “It’s not like that, Luke.” And when I asked her to convince me otherwise, she couldn’t even come up with a decent lie. And then she texted me, almost an entire hour later, with the most cryptic fucking lie of all. Bullshit, I’m the center of her fucking universe. And bullshit she put me on a pedestal, because if that’s fucking true then to her, Cooper is up in the clouds.