Tasha sat down beside me and dragged a towel out of the bag to cover her bare legs. I had worn jeans and a sweatshirt, and I could tell she was cold. “I should’ve listened to your grandma,” she muttered. “This is not summer weather.”

Out over the ocean I saw the last traces of the marine layer hovering in a faint haze. “Not like it is in New England,” I agreed.

She took out her sandwich, folding back the paper deliberately as if she were practicing origami. “There’s something I have to tell you.”

The tone of her voice was so serious that I became worried. “What’s wrong?” I asked.

She spoke quietly, her eyes downcast. “We were together. Haley and me. But we broke up.”

I wasn’t sure if I’d heard her correctly. “What?”

She took a bite of her sandwich, chewed methodically, and swallowed. She still wasn’t looking at me. “We were dating. Well, not dating. We were kind of secretly hooking up because Haley wasn’t really okay with it, and I kept hoping that she’d come around—that maybe this summer once we left high school she’d realize it was fine.” Tasha took another bite of her sandwich, but midway through chewing it she grabbed a napkin and spit it out. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice catching. “It’s fine, but I can’t eat right now.”

This was why Tasha had flown all the way out here. For the first time in a long time, I stopped thinking about Steph. I saw the slightly darker freckles on the brown skin of Tasha’s cheeks, and the redness at the rims of her eyes. All the little things I’d seen but not understood about her and Haley: the way they’d sit leaning against each other, their constant texting, and then the way they suddenly avoided each other. It was a revelation.

I set down my sandwich and scooted over to put my arm around her shoulders, pulling her close to me. “Tash, I’m so sorry,” I said.

I felt her trembling against me.

“After graduation Haley told me it ‘wasn’t her.’ ” Tasha made air quotes as she spoke, and she blinked fiercely. “She said she couldn’t be with me anymore, and she’d only been doing it because she was my friend and she loved me ‘as a friend’ ”—the air quotes again—“but that’s all. She said she was just confused the whole time.”

Tasha reached for a bottle of water, and I let her go. She took a couple of sips and seemed to sag toward the ground.