"You say that like they've got more right to it than you do," Neil says. It's an awkward thing, talking about it. Not the relationship, per se, but just that he doesn't really have the words for all the complexities involved.

Neil can barely articulate his own affections, on a good day, but something in watching the close and clever knot of the four of them had felt good to him. Knowing that people could be that close, not just as friends but as the complex something else that they were trying to figure out together.

"And even if Sabrina does have more reason to take it harder, that doesn't mean that you can't take it hard."