“Okay, but we weren’t talking because—” The words burst from my lips and stop. We weren’t talking because it was too damn hard after the intensity of that summer. I tried so many times, but my hands would always shake as I typed and erased, typed and erased. It was too impossible to reduce our communication to texts or even phone calls, and I didn’t know what to say, how to start. So, I didn’t, and neither did she.

“But you’re here” is all I manage. Don’t you want to be friends? hangs in the air in front of my lips. But I can’t seem to give it voice, because “friends” doesn’t feel like the right word for what we were. Being something else here, in Stratford, away from the magic of the Carolina coast, around Shannon and Chase and real life … none of it makes sense.

“Right, I am, and I’m the one who has to meet new people and shit, so.” She tugs on the familiar gold necklace hanging at her throat, the hamsah and six-pointed star charms clinking against each other quietly. “Role reversal.”

“You already know one person,” I point out. “That’s one more than I knew.”

“Well, when I walked in, the one person I know was otherwise occupied,” she says casually, and I realize she’s talking about watching me flirt with Chase in the hallway. It feels like a little punch to the gut, knowing that was her “welcome” to Stratford, and I feel like I should apologize, but … for what?

“You could’ve interrupted.”

“You and the legendary Chase Harding? I would never.”

The words suggest she’s hurt or mad or maybe both, but her tone doesn’t suggest either one. If anything, it sounds like she’s in on a joke.

How do I respond to that?

“Anyway, turns out I don’t even need to know you to get a party invite, so.”

“I heard. And apparently you’re the person to go to for an invite now.”

Her full lips, uncharacteristically bare and lightly chapped, curve into a smile. “I suppose I am.”

“So,” I ask, genuinely unsure, “do I make the cut for your inaugural Stratford party?”

She slips into her car then, taking a seat behind the wheel and closing the door, although the window is wide open. “I’ll think about it.”

Chapter Three

“You didn’t tell me Jasmine was moving here,” I say accusingly to my mother the second she walks into the kitchen after a day spent taking messages for my former friend’s father. “A little heads-up would’ve been nice.”