She waved a lazy hand. “Yeah, like…you’ve thought about it before, right? About what love is supposed to be.”

I had thought about it before. I had thought about it every time I watched Dad come home late and sit beside Mom on the couch, rubbing slow circles against her back even when he was too exhausted to hold a conversation. I had thought about it every time I caught her pressing a kiss to his temple before bed, or the way his entire body seemed to relax when she laughed.

I had thought about it when I saw Jamal’s parents move through their kitchen like they were performing a routine they had spent a lifetime perfecting—passing ingredients back and forth, tasting each other’s food, bumping shoulders at the stove.

I had thought about it every single time I had watched Beverly and felt something tighten in my ribs. Every time I had caught her humming under her breath, or biting her lip while she read, or tying her hair up without thinking. Every time I had seen her laugh with someone else and felt something vicious curl inside me.

I sighed, rubbing a hand over my jaw. “I don’t think there’s one person for everyone. That’s too easy. The world’s not built that way. People are messy. They break each other, they fix each other, they try again⁠—”

“That’s not a real answer, Blake. What do you think love is?”

A hundred answers sat on my tongue.

Love was the pink nail polish drying on her toes, smudged because I wasn’t as careful as I should have been. Love was hearing a song I didn’t even like and thinking, Beverly would love this. Love was knowing which parts of a song made Beverly close her eyes. Love was fighting the urge to touch her every time my hands were empty. Love was wanting to tell her things before I even understood them myself. Love was knowing she kept a pink lighter in her bag, not because she smoked, but because she liked the way it looked. Love was watching her laugh at something she wasn’t supposed to, biting her lip to keep it in, but failing miserably. Love was knowing that her first instinct when she was sad wasn’t to cry, but to get angry. Love was the way my chest ached with every step she took away from me. Love was everything I couldn’t hold, everything I wasn’t supposed to want, everything I had been trying to forget but never really could. Love was realizing I could name a thousand more things, and still never run out of ways to say her.

But I didn’t say any of it.

I just looked at her, swallowing every answer I had, and said, “Love is knowing someone so well that you could build them from memory.”

Beverly hummed, but she didn’t reply.