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right.”
    Jordan glanced at the phone’s display to see who was calling. Brittany. Finally. She checked the traffic with her side mirrors, turned on the blinker, and pressed the phone to her ear.
    “Hey, Britt. Give me a second to pull over.”
    “Where are you?” Brittany asked, all breezy and casual as if nothing was wrong.
    “Grandma Meredith and I just crossed the border between Tennessee and Georgia.”
    “Talk about Hicksville.”
    “Ah, it’s not so bad. The rural areas remind me of home. Not nearly as many cows, but close enough.”
    “Like I said. Hicksville.”
    Brittany had a sarcastic sense of humor, but Jordan couldn’t remember her turning the sarcasm on her with such venom. Brittany had changed— they had changed—and she didn’t know how to fix it.
    She pulled into a parking spot and shut off the engine. Grandma Meredith unbuckled her seat belt and got out of the car. Jordan didn’t know if she really had to pee or if she was simply clearing out to give her some privacy.
    “Back in a minute.”
    Jordan knew Grandma Meredith couldn’t hear her, but she waited until she walked away before she asked, “What’s going on, Britt?”
    Brittany tried to laugh off her question. “You tell me. You called me, remember?”
    “I called you almost a week ago.”
    “I’ve been busy.”
    “Doing what?”
    “Packing up my apartment and preparing for the drive to Seattle. Now I’m here and semi-settled. I think I’m turning into a mushroom from all the rain, but the protestors’ collective passion keeps me energized.”
    Jordan wished she could be there to experience the excitement for herself.
    “Anyway,” Brittany said as if she had more important things to do than work on their strained relationship, “I got back to you as soon as I could. How are things with you?”
    “Confusing.” Jordan ran her hands over the walnut steering wheel. The cool, smooth wood provided a soothing contrast to the heat building inside her. How could Brittany be so cavalier about something so serious? Didn’t their relationship mean as much to Brittany as it did to her? “When my flight landed in Milwaukee, the first thing I saw when I checked my messages was a Facebook notification saying you had changed your relationship status from In a Relationship to It’s Complicated .”
    “And?” Brittany said warily.
    “Are you breaking up with me?”
    Brittany sucked in a breath as if she’d just been told there’d be a surprise exam on material she hadn’t studied. “I changed my status because it is complicated.”
    “It seems pretty simple to me. I want to be with you and you said you felt the same way. What’s complicated about that?”
    “It just is.” Brittany sighed. “I was hoping we could be civil about this.”
    “Civil about what?”
    “We need to take a break.”
    Jordan’s heart began to race. She had hoped she and Brittany would be able to talk things out, but the prospect seemed to be more of a long shot than a sure thing.
    “We’re going to spend the summer thousands of miles apart. I won’t get to see you for three whole months. How much more of a break do you need?”
    “A permanent one.”
    How had she known Brittany was going to say that?
    “Why?”
    “We moved too fast.” Brittany sounded like she was scrambling for an answer. Something that sounded good without adequately addressing the question at hand. “I mean, how much do we really know about each other?”
    “We’ve been sleeping together for seven months. We know every inch of each other.”
    “That isn’t what I mean. Yes, the sex was great, and it was the one part of our relationship that seemed to capture most of your attention, but we were like cotton candy. All sugar and no substance. If you can’t admit it, I will.”
    Jordan bit her lip to keep from crying. How could Brittany’s opinion of their relationship be so different from hers?
    “I know what you look like in various positions,” Brittany said,