Maliyah had been by my side through all of it. She was there through the episodes with my mom, who didn’t know how to cope after the loss of her marriage and tried to find solace in the worst kind of men after. She understood the abandonment I felt from my dad, and her own father stepped in to take his place, teaching me all the things a father should have as I grew up. More than anything, she was there through all the ups and downs of playing football, reminding me every chance she had that I would make it one day, that I would go pro.

It didn’t feel like losing my girlfriend.

It felt like losing my right arm.

It still hadn’t sunk in that we’d finally made it through a grueling year of long-distance — her in California where we grew up, me here in Massachusetts — only for her to get into NBU, move across the country, and… break up with me.

Nothing about it made sense. I’d tried combing through every word of her breakup speech and had come up empty each time I tried to find reasoning.

“What we had was a great first love, Clay, but that’s all it was — a first love.”

Maliyah’s face crumpled, but not in the way that said she was actually hurt by the statement. It was a collapse of pity, like she was telling a little kid why he couldn’t ride the big boy rollercoaster.

“We made a promise,” I said, thumbing the promise ring on my finger. We’d exchanged them at sixteen, a promise that we’d be together forever — a wedding band in everything but law.

But when I reached out for hers, her finger was bare, the gold band nowhere in sight, and I swallowed as she pulled away with a grimace.

“We were young,” she said, as if that made her breaking my heart reasonable, as if our age somehow disillusioned the love I felt for her.

The love I thought she felt for me.

“But, you’re finally here. You’re at my school.”

That made her frown. “It’s my school, too, now. I’m on the cheerleading squad. And I have… goals. Things I want to accomplish.”

She couldn’t look at me when she said it, and my nose flared with emotion that I struggled to keep at bay. I knew that look. It was the same one she gave when I bought her a dress that she didn’t really like, but didn’t want to tell me so because it would hurt my feelings. It was the look she got from her father, Cory Vail, a powerful tech lawyer in Silicon Valley who was used to getting what he wanted.

And who expected his daughter to do the same.

It was easy enough to put the pieces together, and I sobered at the realization.

“I’m not good enough.”