Poe cleared his throat. “Am I better off not knowing?”

Everyone in the world was. It was too humiliating. “Yes.”

“Those attacks were…personal.”

“Yes.”

“I thought as much. It’s not the usual society feud M.O. Was it an academic or romantic rival?”

Right. Because it was always school or love for an Eli student. Were our troubles as simple as that? I took a deep breath. “I thought I was heading toward something important with this guy, and I was wrong, and Dragon’s Head used it to get to me. That’s all.” It was enough.

“George?” The word exploded out of his mouth.

“Does everyone know about that?” Guess it was silly of George to think that leaving it out of the C.B. would accomplish anything.

“We didn’t become Diggers due to a lack of perception, Amy.”

“Well, you aren’t experts, either. That’s been over for months.” And while it had been going on, I knew exactly what I’d been doing. My heart stayed clear of entanglements with Eli’s most notorious playboy. No, when I decided to get my heart broken, I took the road less traveled.

“Oh,” Poe said. “Forgive me if I’ve failed to keep up with the latest in your love life.”

“No one asked you to,” I snapped, then instantly regretted it. He’d been attempting a wee bit of civility, which was pretty much a miracle when it came to Poe. I shouldn’t wreck it. “Sorry,” I said. “I’m a little sensitive at the moment.”

“At the moment?”

I bit my tongue. “It’s just been demonstrated to me, yet again, that I’m doomed when it comes to romance. I’ve got to prepare for a life alone.”

Poe took a deep breath. “Listen, I have severe doubts that this is any of my business, but in the interest of fulfilling my duty, can I give you some advice?”

Advice from Poe. Romantic advice…from Poe. Okay. If nothing else, it would be entertaining. I nodded.

“I don’t think that the way college dating works has any bearing on the real world. If you don’t have a good experience for these four years, it doesn’t mean you should start fitting yourself for a habit and enter a convent. I didn’t have a girlfriend in college, and I turned out okay.” He paused. “Okay, you don’t think I turned out okay…”

I laughed in spite of myself. “I think you turned out fine,” I said, mostly because etiquette demanded a denial. Mostly. Because really, who was the one in real trouble here? The guy who seemed comfortable with his desire to hang out alone, in the dark, in secret, or the girl standing in the rain, sobbing?

He shrugged. “Thank you for saying so, at least.”

He looked down at my hands, which were currently twisting the life out of his handkerchief. I didn’t know anyone our age who used handkerchiefs. And, oddly enough, rather than seeming like another example of his weirdness, it suddenly felt to me like something grand, old-fashioned, a little refined. As that thought occurred to me, I stopped wringing it, lest it tear in my fists. I held it up.

“Uh, keep it,” he said.

“That’s nice of you,” I said.

“Not really,” he said. “It’s covered with your snot.”

Did I say refined? I meant rude. Rude.

And that thought must have shown in my posture, because he backtracked. “That’s not what I meant.”

“Though it’s true.”

“Yes.” He looked at me. “You get offended by some things that blow my mind, and then, sometimes, when I’m trying to offend you, you don’t even notice.”

“I notice. You can tell, because I bite back.”

“Note to self,” he said. “Pre-emptively, I’m not trying to offend you right now. If I do, it’s accidental.”

“So ‘Brace yourself’?” I translated.

“I was just wondering, how much of this—” he gestured to the handkerchief and my tear-streaked face, “—is a result of losing this…guy, and how much of it is just losing?”

“What!” I hadn’t braced for that.

Poe, being in for the penny, decided to go for the pound. “Maybe your heart is really broken. That’s possible. Or maybe it’s February, and you haven’t seen the sun in weeks, and it’s cold and icy every day, and you are trying to write a thesis and look your future in the face, all while hiding from a bunch of assholes who are turning this campus into a war zone for you. And now they’ve won.”

The lump in my throat got so huge I could barely breathe. I definitely couldn’t speak, couldn’t respond to Poe’s outlandish…accusation. How could he be saying that my feelings weren’t my feelings? How could he be saying that Brandon and I…that it wasn’t…

“I just find it surprising that you are in the midst of a huge romantic crisis but, as far as I can tell, it came out of nowhere.”

“Out of nowhere!” I shouted past the lump. “What do you know about it?”

“Nothing.” His voice was perfectly calm.

“Exactly,” I agreed, then ran out of things to argue. “You have no idea what I’m dealing with.”

“You’re right.” The pause that followed his words seemed full of unspoken thoughts, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear any more of this patriarch’s advice.

Slowly, it dawned on me that I was sitting in the dark, with Poe, discussing my love life. How weird would it look if another Digger were suddenly to walk by here, looking for me, and discover this little tête-à-tête?

“I should go,” I said.

“Do you want me to walk you back to Prescott?” He obviously didn’t disagree with me. Guess “sharing time” was over.

“It’s out of your way,” I said. Poe lived off-campus in the opposite direction.

“It’s not a problem.”

“It’s pouring rain. You don’t even need to be out here.”

“I vastly prefer a society plot to hanging out in my dump of an apartment.”

One word remained unspoken—“alone.” I blinked at him. I don’t think I’d ever heard him speak like that before. The standard Poe qualities of bitterness and sarcasm were there, but this was casual and matter-of-fact. It’s like he had nothing to hide, as if he’d figured: I’d seen his apartment (maybe I was the only one who had), I knew what it looked like, so why bother putting up a front? Or maybe he was hoping I’d disagree with him, defend the “dump”? Or maybe he decided that letting me glimpse his feelings was only fair payback for my big revelation of the evening. Who knew? But he did have my sympathies. How many nights had I been glad that I had Lydia waiting for me, fun and funny and not at all like Poe’s pet snake?

“Do you…want to grab a slice of pizza or something?” I blurted out.

He hesitated. “You want to be seen in public with…” a microsecond pause, “…your face looking like that?”

I cocked my head to the side. “The real question is, do you want to be seen in public with a face like this?”

“I’d consider it.” He stood, his expression still wary.

I pasted on a weak smile. “Are you sure they don’t do deliveries to the law library?”

“Yes, but I think I have a bag of stale Doritos in my study carrel.”

“Pass.”

So I had pizza with Poe. (Er, Jamie. But really, I have a hard time reminding myself of that.) And we didn’t talk much at all. Just ate. It’s surprising how ravenous heartbreak makes you. Also surprising is how long I’d been at Eli without discovering some of the truly bizarre items on the menu at one of our most classic restaurants. White clam pizza. Who knew? Total revelation.

When he dropped me off in front of Prescott College, he said. “Are you going to Cavador?”

“Yeah,” I swiped my card at the gate. “There are nine from my club going. You?”

He nodded. “Cheapest vacation ever. And some of my club will be there, too. It’ll be nice to see them again.” He took another deep breath. “Amy, I know you don’t want to hear this right now, but I think that when you come back from Spring Break, everything will be different.”

“So I just need to make it through another few days and all my troubles will be over?” Yeah, right. Cavador Key was a retreat, not a miracle cure.