Blane McDonough stood before the high white door he'd sworn never to darken again, and hated himself.

He knew this doorstep well, from the neoclassical portico to the ornate door handle. He knew this house, these grounds. Probably better than you know yourself. The thought came with a twist of bitter irony, and he held onto it stubbornly, like a sharp object, letting it really dig into the tender loam of his mind.

Tonight, he'd gotten in his BMW coupe and drove, torturing himself with the mix tape Andie had made him back in June. "It has a slow, mopey, romantic side, and a fun, funky side," she'd said, when she handed it to him. "So you can choose, depending on your mood." Right then his mood was more underground than Andie's taste in music, so it wasn't hard to choose. He'd cruised the wide streets on the right side of the tracks, passing mansions, eyes on the road and the volume on high. He cycled through The Cure, The Smiths and Tears for Fears, steeping in his feelings. He felt a lump form in his throat at The Motels' Suddenly Last Summer. When he hit Split Enz' I Hope I Never, he viciously rewound it and played it again. And again. And again.

Something inside me says this is always how it was supposed to end.

Lighten up, Blane. You act like life is a permanent condition. It wasn't his own voice he heard in his head this time, but it was one he always listened to, for better or worse. For once, he'd eased up his perfectionist death-grip on his psyche and let his bruised mind wander—and his traitorous subconscious had led him here, to a familiar place in a world he belonged where he felt like an angry, self-loathing stranger.

He took a deep breath as he braced a hand against the door. He closed his eyes, steadying his nerves; steeling them. The night air was rarified here, on their side of town; in ways he knew well but could never quite describe—balmy and sweet at the end of August, with the freshness that rose from the long green lawns, and a cool under-breeze that hinted coyly at the sport and splendor of an upper-crust Fall, with promises of cold, bracing air and bright, burning leaves.

Just the perfect evening of another terrible day in the worst week of his life. He rang the bell.

The doorbell didn't buzz, like it did at Andie's house. Instead it launched into a complicated symphony of chimes, each one blooming and overlapping the next. That was all right. Blane was buzzed enough for both of them. He waited, hands in his pockets, fuming somewhere under the unstructured neutrality of his Oxford blazer, trying to school his expression to something less petulant on the off-chance McKee's parents were actually home and answering their own door.

After a leisurely moment or two, the door opened, and he was face to face with McKee, without even having to ask for the pleasure.

He looked the same as ever, with his crisp white shirt unbuttoned almost to the navel, and a cigarette dangling from his lips. Steff looked at him for a long time, with his heavy-lidded gaze. Took him in, from collar to Topsiders. "Why are you here, Blane?"

"Because you used to be my best friend, and I had nowhere else to go." Blane could feel the rush of outrage overtake him, everything he'd so lovingly cultivated in the past week of wallowing. At least now he could aim it at someone deserving. "You'll be happy to know Andie and I are quits."

"Already over, is it? Thought you'd at least last the summer. I won't say I told you so."

"Go for it," Blane said, spreading his arms. "I came here so you could take your shot, since life already has."

"Don't be so dramatic. You're eighteen and your family has more money than God. Are you coming in? Because I really don't have all fucking night to stand here at the door and play Horatio to your self-pitying soliloquy. I need another Scotch for that."

He turned and strolled back into the cavernous foyer of the French Provincial chateau, leaving the door open. Blane followed a moment later, still on the warpath. "After all that—all that bullshit you put me through—you really have nothing to say? No gloating, no laughing in my face?"

"Why would I do that?" At the top of the stairs, Steff turned to look at him. "Did you think I actually give a shit?" The words carried a casually cutting indifference, but no particular venom.

Blane followed him down the upstairs hall, like a vengeful shadow. "You sure acted like you gave a shit, when you tried to mess up what we had. When you tried to keep me away from her, when you looked down on her and shit on her for being…"

Steff paused at the threshold of his palatial bedroom. "For being what?" he said, as he went inside, and Blane followed him, the way he always had.

"Different. Of a different class, yeah. But also just…" Blane pushed a hand through the front of his hair, sinking miserably down in the corner bergère. "Different."

Steff eyed him for a moment with something like pity, which surprised him, shadowed by a just hint of contempt. That last, at least, was familiar. "She's not that different, McDonough."

"You're just jealous." He bit out the words, glaring at Steff, feeling the smoldering resentment burn him like a held coal.

"If you say so." Steff crossed to the bedside table and picked up a tawny bottle of Talisker, refreshing his rocks glass.

The lights were low in Steff's room, which was a departure from the rest of the house; sleek modernism colliding with old-world structure and rococo elements in a way that Blane still had to admit was pleasing. He'd spent more hours in this room than his own. It was a far cry from the guest room Andie had seen, where Steff and Benny had lolled indecently and Benny had been blowsy and tipsy and even crueler than usual. Something was playing on the television across from the vast, black satin-dressed bed; a movie where a furtive man watched as a woman moved in semi-silhouette, touching herself to an erotic and ethereal electronic song, where a female voice sensually intoned high arpeggios on a single vowel.

It lent a strange, surreal aura to the scene, and Blane found himself responding to the evocative ambience, gazing forward, his senses blurring and warming. He rubbed his eyes, wondering if he'd had too many beers or nowhere near enough.

Steff followed his gaze to the screen. "Body Double," he said. "De Palma. It's a good flick, if you didn't catch it in the theatres. Score's by Pino Donaggio," he added, as if that should mean something to Blane. "This one's called 'Telescope'."

He reached over and pushed "pause" on the remote control. The woman stilled mid self-caress, the stilled image of her seductive silhouette distorted and striped with jittery static. "But you were saying something, weren't you? About how jealous I was."

"Andie is different," muttered Blane, eventually. "She was special."

"All right. Then why aren't you with her now?"

"Because shit doesn't always work out the way you want."

"Tell me about it."

"Oh, I intend to."

"Passive-aggressive, as usual. You're so goddamn weak-minded, Blane. So easily swayed. Even now, I could push you over with a fucking finger. Always could." Steff turned abruptly, running his hand back through his lush mane of blondish hair. "What is with you, anyhow? Are you really that alienated over this? Christ. You're worse than me."

"I very much doubt that," Blane said, acidly.

"Well, believe it, friend," said Steff, flatly. "There you sit, head to foot, in J. Crew, beige and blue. Blane's pretty close to bland. Just one letter off."

"What the hell does that mean?" He wondered if he'd come here to take Steff's casual abuse, specifically and masochistically, just to compound his misery so he could really wallow in it.

Steff's expression was mild. "Your problem is you're fucking boring. There's nothing behind that Tiger Beat face and boyish charm. She was hoping you'd be someone interesting, and you were hoping she'd be someone interesting. And while you were at odds, and had external tension and everything" –he waved his cigarette hand vaguely in the air— "it felt like something. And then you finally got alone together, and there was no there, there."

Blane glowered, silently, but couldn't deny it. He hated Steff in that moment. Hated him for his unerring but cynical insight into human nature, and his blunt lack of diplomacy, couched in the polished tones of a seasoned ambassador.

"Tell me I'm wrong."

"Fuck you."

"Don't feel bad, Blane. I didn't get it back then either. Back then I convinced there was something in there, in you, my God, something exquisite. I told myself you were just guarded. Like I was guarded. Because of how our world works. Our rarified little world." Steff smiled briefly. "That you didn't trust me. I didn't blame you for that, because who would trust me? I told myself I just had to keep hanging around you, keep you hanging around, and some day you'd let me close and show it to me. The real you." He shrugged, negligently. "And if you showed me that, I could show you the real me."

Blane stared. "The real you? And what would that be? A halfway decent person? Or an even bigger asshole?"

"You have that self-righteous look on your face again, like you're straddling a pineapple. The impotent-but-angry young man. All your Catcher in the Rye bullshit. I used to find it endearing." Steff shot him a cool smile. "There's plenty going on in my head, pal. I have my flaws, I admit, but blandness isn't one of them. Neither is inauthenticity."

"Oh sure, yeah, you're real original. You, and your linen suits, and your sports car—"

"You think my clothes and my car signify what's up here?" Steff tapped his temple lightly. "That says more about you than it does about me, friend."

Blane leaned forward in the chair, accusatory. "You wanted Andie as much as I did. If she was so boring and so unremarkable, why would that be, Steff?"

Steff shook his head slowly. "McDonough, your lack of imagination and limited powers of discernment fail you even here, where you simply can't conceive of another possibility, even when it's so adjacent as to be obvious, requiring only the slightest adjustment of perspective."

"Yeah, and what the fuck does that mean?"

"It means I was jealous of her," Steff said, enunciating each word with particular intent. He shrugged again. "Not you."

"Of her."

"That's what I said." Steff raised his glass to his lips. His expression and manner were mild, as they habitually were.

"I don't get you, you know that?"

"Oh, I know that. I'm well aware."

Blane shoved his face into his hands. "Why did you have to be so goddamn shitty about it? To undermine my shot at happiness. Jesus Christ, and I called you my best friend."

"You got your shot at happiness, Blane. Regardless of anything I may or may not have said or done, and it cratered in any case. Face it: she wasn't worth it, after all."

"You know what? Screw you, McKee. Just because you can't appreciate…creative, free-thinking individualism, just because you don't see the point or worth of girls who aren't icy blonde society clones like Benny—"

Steff laughed, then; sharply and abruptly, like he hadn't intended to, but couldn't believe how funny that was. "You think there aren't real girls—women—out there, who are truly outré, Blane? I've met plenty. Artists, gallery owners, performers, tastemakers. The real avant-garde. People who do things, create things. Catalysts; firebrands. All of them with more individuality and intrigue than your little trash-princess in her grandma get-ups."

Blane stared, but Steff didn't seem to notice, or care. Instead, he held forth, like he'd been waiting for the chance.

"I don't hold it against her, mind you—most people are nowhere near as remarkable as they think they are, or as unique as they'd like to believe." He frowned faintly. "But at the time, she had you. Which was eating me alive, and I admit, I wasn't so kind."

"That's an understatement."

Steff shrugged. "Fine. I was awful. I thought you were settling for less than you were worth, but turns out I was wrong. You deserved each other. You're both oatmeal, McDonough. She's oatmeal with cinnamon, at most. And you weren't the one slumming. I was."

"Listen to yourself. You've got to be fucking kidding me."

"Not at all." Steff mashed out the cigarette and left it for dead. "You're both dull as butter knives."

"Dull? Are you blind? Have you seen her? She's got more personality in one outfit than you've got in your whole wardrobe." Blane found himself defensive, in spite of their split. Andie's quirkiness was a carefully cultivated point of pride.

Steff sighed and rolled his eyes. "Oh, right. When your clothes are shorthand for your individuality, and your music taste stands in for opinions and convictions, and your consumption and accumulation of fetishized objects is somehow more noble than other people's, because it's inherently edgy. And your status symbols are just different shit, all leading to the same desire: some kind of credibility you never earned."

"You're saying—"

"I'm saying: personality is not a stupid hat, Blane. It's not pig-shaped buttons on a cardigan, or wearing too many socks. No matter how you dress, you either have it or you don't. And she doesn't."

"Oh, so now you're an expert on psychology."

"I am something of an expert on psychology, actually. Armchair, amateur, sure. A dilettante who dabbles, but I know human nature. Every manipulative person does. It surprises me that you, of all people, doubt this about me."

Blane fixed him with a peevish stare. "I don't doubt anything when it comes to you."

"I had a point I was getting to, Blane, all right? Look, it's that guy at the boardwalk who wants you to know he's special, because he has parrots on the basket of his bike. It's the girl with a boa constrictor and Boy George braids, who thinks it passes for a personality. And if you think that's any different than high society posturing, you're fooling yourself. Compulsively conformist in their nonconformity. Like your little orphan Andie, there. But it never gets beyond the externals. Not really. Don't forget: she still had no interest in that weird little friend of hers. Wouldn't give him the time of day. She wanted the rich, popular guy with the pretty blue eyes and the winning smile. Just like all the rest of them." He paused. "Including me."

Blane raised his voice, almost shouting. "You had me, you asshole. I was your best friend."

"I didn't have you. Not the way I wanted you."

Silence elapsed. Blane eyed him guardedly, as Steff crossed the room to drop into a Corbusier chair. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Steff sighed. "It's not that complicated, McDonough." He took a sip, squinting; worried it for a moment before swallowing. "If you really want to know, there was a time when I felt a great deal of warmth toward you. More than you'd think."

"Warmth," repeated Blane. "Yeah, sure. Before Andie came along, you were a pretty great friend, you know? Always had my back. Always wanted what was best for me. For years, Steff. We were friends for years. And then one day I meet the girl of my dreams, and you can't handle it."

"You're right. I couldn't handle it." Steff's agreement was equable, as if they were discussing a wholly uncontroversial subject. "That ought to tell you something."

"What it told me, is that you're a fucking asshole who never actually gave a shit about me. An entitled bastard who would play nice as long as he got what he wanted. The best friend I ever had, until I stepped out of line."

Steff pointed at nothing in particular. "Now there, you'd be wrong. You were doing well, McDonough, but you took it in the wrong direction when the time came to draw a conclusion. Don't feel bad; happens all the time in science." He shrugged. "But, as in science, after you eliminate all the wrong answers, whatever you're left with must be the right answer, no matter how improbable."

"You want me to believe you went off the rails because you cared about me so much, is that it?" Blane gave an incredulous laugh, disbelieving. "You bullied Andie mercilessly. All because you were jealous of the time she spent with me?"

"Tell him what he's won." Steff uttered the words lightly, non-contesting, swirling his scotch.

"If that's true," Blane said, struggling to process, pushing a hand back over his brow and through his tousled brown hair. "If that's true, then it was all goddamn unnecessary. Jesus Christ, it wouldn't have changed anything, Steff. So what if Andie was my girlfriend? I've had girlfriends before. You'd still have been my best friend."

"What you fail to apprehend is that I'm not talking about being your best friend, friend." Steff's smile was faint; small and chilly, as if on some level he was amused at the absurdity of his own words. His sultry eyes were averted, deliberately and conspicuously so. "When I thought about you, I envisioned something more like blood brothers, with a different exchange of fluids. Strictly non-platonic. When you and I would hang out in my room, like we are now, I was thinking some very impure thoughts."

Blane watched him wide-eyed, with a growing sense of surreality, but Steff wasn't looking at him. He tilted his head, rhapsodic, and went on. "When we'd lounge on my bed and watch movies late at night, sometimes you'd fall asleep, and I'd watch you instead; just let the screen go to static. I'd lie here in the buzz and the darkness and study you, trying to figure out why, if I could have anyone, all I wanted was you."

Something was climbing in Blane's chest, invasive as ivy on a campus wall; creeping outward, twining itself in and among his ribs. He was very still, sprawled in the chair, afraid to draw Steff's attention, in case it made him snap to his senses and stop talking. He felt paralyzed at the revelation, so he just sat there like wallpaper, quiet and conflicted.

"I'd felt that way for years. Like you were already mine, and you just didn't know it yet. So many times when we were alone and you were close, I had to stop myself. I had all these impulses"—he waved his hand to punctuate the words— "I had every intention of acting on, one day. Then we were seniors, and I knew my time was running out. I had to get this off my chest, or miss my shot. Wouldn't you know it, I was working up to it, and then, bam. Andie happened. It didn't sit well. I acted out." He made a gesture as if to acknowledge the understatement of that. "And even at the end, when you came to me with that blistering prom night speech you rehearsed in front of the fucking mirror, you still didn't get it. She wasn't the object, friend. She was the obstacle."

"Why are you telling me this?" Blane's throat was suddenly dry, and the scotch in Steff's careless hand looked better than anything he'd ever seen.

"Because it doesn't matter now," said Steff, offhand, without philosophy. He took another sip.

"Pour me one of those."