Rachel showed up at seven with two bags of groceries and a smile like she was meeting friends for dinner.

"Hi!" she said at the door. "I brought stuff for the risotto. Is Anaïs here yet?"

I stepped aside and she walked into my kitchen like it was her own. That was the thing about the book nobody could have prepared me for. Nobody knocked twice. Nobody asked why. The order I'd given her that morning, come over after class, cook, clean, act normal, had settled into her head so smoothly that she'd built an entire evening around it, told her roommate she was studying, and probably felt good about being a helpful person.

Anaïs arrived ten minutes later and kissed me at the door with the ease of a girlfriend of three years. Then she walked into the kitchen and said, "Rachel, use the good pan, not the scratched one."

"Okay!" Rachel switched pans.

I leaned on the doorframe and watched my girlfriend give orders to a girl who had no idea she was giving them or taking them.

Dinner was nice. That's the part that still gets me. It was nice. Rachel talked about her seminar paper. Anaïs talked about some party next weekend and asked if I wanted to come, and I said yes, and she lit up. Both of them passed me dishes and laughed at things I said. I sat there eating risotto cooked by a girl who thought she'd volunteered, next to a girl who thought she'd chosen me.

Then I tested.

"Rachel, stand up."

She stood, mid-sentence, finished the sentence standing, and sat back down when I said sit.

"Rachel, do you know why you're here?"

"Because I wanted to help out." She paused. "And the risotto's better than the dining hall."

"You're here because I told you to be here."

She nodded. "Sure."

"Do you believe that?"

Her brow creased, like she was working out a word in a language she didn't speak, and then she said, "No." Cheerful. Unbothered.

"Do you know you're my slave?"

"Okay," she said.

"Do you believe it?"

"No."

"Does that bother you?"

"No."

There it was. I'd seen it with Nicolas and I'd seen it with Anaïs, but it hit differently watching it happen across a dinner table, with eye contact. They can repeat the words back to you. They just can't hold the meaning. I …