He places his glass on the outdoor bar and steps away from Mom. “Women who are successful in business are ladies,” he says through clenched teeth, and I feel an odd trickle of satisfaction, knowing how much he’s enjoying this moment. I’ve been nothing but responsible and ambitious over the last four years, making it nearly impossible for him to be constantly critical. But he’s in his element now; my father is much more comfortable delivering insults than praise.

“We went to Vegas to celebrate graduation, Dad. We didn’t become hookers.” No, Mia, you just got married to a stranger.

“You have a lot of growing up to do before you deserve your admission to BU. As much as I disliked the idea of you being a dancer for the rest of your life, at least I admired your ambition. Now, as soon as you graduate from college, you come home looking like you’ve been . . .” He shakes his head. “I don’t even know what you’ve been doing. No man will ever want to work for a tramp who comes to work with bruised lips and hickeys, smelling like days-old booze. Clean up your act, Mia.”

Mom gasps in a shocked breath, and looks up at him as if she’ll object to this absurd tirade. But her energy dissipates as he meets her eyes in challenge. He storms back inside, his mimosa forgotten. Mom stays behind, saying only, “Oh, sweetheart.”

“Don’t, Mom. I’m fine.”

I don’t want her to have to take my side. I’m leaving soon, and life is so much easier for her when she’s squarely Team David. She throws me a conflicted glance before she follows Dad back into the house.

The sliding glass door closes too hard, and I can still hear my dad. Will she ever learn? She’ll throw this opportunity away over my dead body.

I look out over my mom’s perfect yard—immaculate lawn, lush flower beds, pristine white fence—and feel like an unsightly weed in the middle of it. I’ve always felt just a little out of place here. I feel like a complete outsider now.

THE DISCOVERY OUTPOST at the San Diego Zoo is never the biggest draw for the crowds. But behind the Reptile House and past the Wegeforth Bowl there’s a set of exhibits that remain virtually silent even when the zoo is overrun with tourists. It’s always been my favorite metaphor—find the quiet in the chaos—and the place I do my best thinking.

Early Tuesday afternoon, I slip past tourists and families with green plastic zoo-issued strollers at the zoo entrance and turn left past the flamingo exhibit, heading to my secret spot. I need to think about what I’ll pack for Boston, and whether I can organize everything so I can move next week instead of three weeks from now.

I need to think about what kind of job I’d like to get: Waitress. Bakery. Retail. Some sort of business assistant. Maybe a nightclub dancer, just to birdflip my father from across the country. My mind pushes forcibly away from the immediate thought of working as a dance instructor. I turn down the bend and head toward my favorite bench, sitting down and exhaling a long, heavy breath.

I most definitely do not need to think about how at any point today, Ansel could be flying back to Paris.

“You’re right,” a deep, familiar voice says from just a little farther down the path. “This part of the zoo is deserted.”

I don’t believe my ears. I open my eyes to see Ansel walking up the paved walkway. He lowers himself on the bench and stretches his arm across the back, letting it rest behind me. The fingers of his right hand spread across my shoulder.

I’m speechless.

It’s a familiar sensation but for completely unfamiliar reasons. I’m speechless from shock, rather than restraint.

“H-h-” I start, squeezing my eyes shut.

He waits, patiently, fingertips sliding warm and smooth over my skin.

“What are you doing here? How did you know—”

“You told me you come here to think. You said you love this part of the zoo, and I’ll admit,” he says, looking around, “I don’t understand it at all. It’s mostly concrete and sleeping lizards. But I got here maybe an hour ago?” He tilts his head, smiling warmly as if he’s not a terrifying stalker. “And I’m here because I can’t be away from you, Mia. You’re my wife.”

My eyes must go wide in horror because he bursts out laughing, retrieving his arm so he can bend over and rest his elbows on his thighs. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t very nice. I’m in San Diego because I’m flying out of the airport here tonight. Oliver is meeting with the architect remodeling his store, and it’s the last time we’ll see each other for a while. We drove down together last night, and today I came here, hoping it was true that you come here to think all the time. And maybe to do a little thinking myself,” he adds, looking over at me and smiling sweetly. “I promise I was kidding.”

“You still came here looking for me,” I remind him, inching away slightly.

He digs into his back pocket and hands me a sheet of folded paper. I open it and realize it’s a copy of our marriage license. “You didn’t have a copy. You didn’t even know how to spell my last name, I don’t think. I would have called you, but even though I was smart enough to leave you my number, I realized I don’t have yours.”

I feel like a complete ass**le. He’s really gone out of his way to make sure I have this, and I couldn’t even text him my number.

“Thanks,” I say quietly.

“Of course.”

I move closer again, putting my hand on his arm, and as the adrenaline in my blood slows to a steady hum, I realize how ridiculously giddy I am to see him. “So, wait, Oliver is opening a store in San Diego?” I absolutely don’t think Lola knew his store was going to be in our hometown.

He nods as he lifts my hand, kisses it. “He’s moving here in a few weeks. Anyway, I just wanted to make sure you had that before you moved.” He nods to the paper I have clenched in my hand, and then stands. “I didn’t want to mail it to your house and have your dad open it.” I swallow heavily, stunned at how thoughtful he’s been. “I’m going to head back to the hotel and relax for a bit. I have a long flight ahead of me.”

“What time do you fly out?”

He blinks away, brows pulled together as he thinks. “Around eleven?”

He pushes his hands into his pockets before I can see if he’s still wearing his ring. He looks at my hands and sees that I am. “My email is just my first and last name together at XMail,” he tells me. “We can coordinate everything in September.”

“Okay,” I say, nodding.

He leans down, kisses the top of my head, and then whispers, “I’ll be at the Hilton Bayfront until around eight. I bought an open, round-trip ticket for you to Paris.” Standing up, he shrugs and lets a huge smile spread across his face as my jaw hits the sidewalk. “What can I say, I’m an optimist. Or insane. Depends on who you ask.”

He may be insane, but that ass looks mighty fine as he walks away.

Sitting in my lizard and concrete shelter for a while, I contemplate going home and immediately discard the thought. I contemplate going to Lola’s and hanging out with her and Greg for dinner, but I’m sure she’s giving her dad the full rundown of our insanity over the weekend. No doubt he’s laughing his ass off, and I don’t really want to be the killjoy who got sentimental. I contemplate heading over to Harlow’s place in La Jolla, but even though some brainless beach time sounds amazing, the genuine love and intense focus of the entire Vega clan would provide too stark a contrast to my own family’s weirdness.

So I drive downtown.

ANSEL PULLS THE door open and breaks into an enormous smile, which slowly fades as he sees I’ve come empty-handed, no suitcase. Nothing but my tiny cross-body bag slung over my chest.

“I can’t come to France with you,” I start, looking up at him with wide eyes. My pulse feels like a heavy drum in my throat. “But I didn’t want to go home, either.”

He steps to the side to let me in and I drop my bag on the floor and turn to watch him. There’s really only one reason I’m here, in this hotel room, and I think we both know it. It’s easy to pretend to be the lover in a movie, coming to the hotel for one last night together. I don’t have to work to be brave when it’s safe like this: he’s leaving. It becomes almost like a game. A play. A role.

I don’t know which Mia is taking over my body, but I’m shutting out everything but how it feels to be so close to this boy. I only have to take one step closer and he meets me halfway, sliding both hands into my hair and covering my mouth with his. Ocean and green and still the lingering scent of me on his clothes.

His taste, oh. I want to feel so full of him that every other thought dissolves under the heat of it. I want his mouth everywhere, sucking at me like he does. I love how he loves my lips, how—after only one night together—his hands already know my skin.

He walks me back to the bed, lips and tongue and teeth all over my cheeks and mouth and jaw. I fall backward when my knees hit the bed.

He pulls at the hem of my dress and unsheathes me in a single determined tug, then reaches behind me, ridding me of my bra with a tiny slip of his fingers. He makes me feel like I’m something to reveal, something in which to revel. I’m the reward at the end of his magic trick, exposed beneath the velvet cape. His eyes rake across my skin and I can see his own impatience: shirt flung across the room, fingers tugging at his belt, tongue flicking at the air, searching for the taste of me.

Ansel gives up on undressing, instead kneeling on the floor between my thighs, spreading me, kissing me through the fabric of my underwear. He nibbles and tugs, sucking and licking impatiently before he slides my last remaining article of clothing down my legs.

I gasp when he leans forward, covering my most sensitive skin in a long, slow lick. His breath feels like tiny bursts of fire where he kisses my clit, my pubic bone, my hip. I push up, leaning back on my hands to watch him.

“Tell me what you need,” he says, his voice raspy against my hip.

With this, I remember weakly that he made me come with his hands and body, but not his mouth. I can sense the need to conquer this, and wonder how long he tried before I grew impatient, pulling him up and into me.

The truth is I’m not sure what I need. Oral sex has always been a stop on the way to somewhere else. A way to get me wet, to make the circuit of my body. Never something done until I shook and sweated and swore.

“S-suck,” I say, guessing.

He opens his mouth, sucking perfectly for a breath of time and then too much. “Not so hard.” I close my eyes, finding the bravery to tell him, “Like you suck on my lip.”

It’s exactly the direction he needed and I fall back against the mattress without thinking, my legs spreading wider, and with this he grows wild. Palms firmly planted on my inner thighs to keep my legs open, sounds pressed into me, vibrating through me.

One of his hands leaves me and I can feel him moving, can sense the shifting of his arm. Propping myself on an elbow I look down and realize he’s touching himself, eyes on me, fevered.

“Let me,” I tell him. “I want to taste you, too.”

I don’t know where these words are coming from; I’m not myself right now. Maybe I’m never myself with him. He nods but doesn’t stop moving his hand. I love it. I love that it’s not weird or taboo. He’s lost in me, he’s hard, he’s giving in to the need for his own pleasure while he gives me mine.

As he kisses and sucks and licks with such uninhibited hunger, I’m afraid I won’t be able to come and his enthusiasm and effort will be wasted. But then I feel the tight pull, the edge of something that grows bigger and bigger with every breath across my skin. I thread my hands in his hair, rock up into him.

“Oh, God.”

He groans, mouth eager, eyes on me wide and thrilled.

I relish the tight swell of my tendons, my muscles, the blood rushing so heated and urgent in my veins. I can feel it build, spread out, and race through my limbs, exploding between my legs. I’m gasping, hoarse and senseless, offering no words, just sharp sounds. The echo of my orgasm rings around us as I fall back onto the pillow.

I feel drugged, and with effort I push him away from where his lips press to my thigh so I can sit up. He stumbles to his feet, pants undone and slung low over his hips. I look up at him, and from the light coming out of the bathroom I can see how wet his mouth is, from me—as if he was hunting, as if I was caught and devoured.

He wipes a forearm across his entire face, and steps closer to the bed just as I lean forward and take him in my mouth.

He cries out, desperate. “Already close.”

It’s a warning. I can feel it in the jutting thrusts of his hips, the tense swelling of the head of his cock, the way he grips my head like he wants to pull back, make this last longer, but can’t. He f**ks my mouth, seeming to know already that it’s okay, and after only six sharp jabs across my tongue and teeth and lips, he’s holding steady, deep inside and coming with a low, rasping groan.