Despite that she’d tried to prepare for the inevitability of his leaving from the moment he’d kissed her, his words still struck her like a physical blow. She felt winded and aching.

Soon, hopefully. And then what? “Argus, tell me a story.”

His eyes widened a little, sparking with surprise and delight. She’d never asked him for a story. She’d always been the one telling them.

“Tell me your story,” she amended.

The joy immediately bled from his expression, and he looked down at his feet. Hlee clenched her jaw. Somehow, she’d known he wouldn’t. He still refused despite that he’d asked for her story the first time they’d met. Despite the time they’d spent together, despite that she now knew the feel of his bare shoulder beneath her palm, the press of his body along hers, the way he tasted with rainwater sliding between their mouths.

What was she to him? A summer fling? A way to pass the time until his dad came back to whisk him away to his real life somewhere? She’d told him so many stories, giving a bit of herself every time, but had they ever been real? Make-believe words for make-believe friends.

She rose, steeling herself against the way his eyes followed her, hungry for the sight of her. “There’s dinner inside.” She gestured to the house. “Guess I’ll see you around.”

“Hlee, wait,” he began, before Niam Tais’s voice rang from the house, calling his name.

She shook her head and hurried away, the weight of Argus’s gaze on her back. Even though she knew it was stupid, she willed him to come after her, to call her name again, to do something other than what he did—which was to watch her leave and then turn away to answer Niam Tais.

Hlee spent the next week doing everything she could to distract herself from the certainty that with the start of term looming, Argus would be leaving soon. She cleaned her room, painted the fence with her dad, and helped her mom weed the yard.

It rained on the last Friday evening of summer break as the sun was setting. The downpour was brief, the clouds dispersing quickly. When Hlee glanced out her window, the faint impression of a rainbow arched across the dusky night sky. Its colors were barely discernible—it looked more silvery than anything—but still, it took her breath away.

Before she’d thought it through, she had her shoes on and was flying out her front door. She had to make sure Argus was seeing this. If nothing else, they’d have this memory of their summer together—like the lunar rainbow, rare and brief, but beautiful.