We changed back into our clothes after we swam, and I caught a glimpse of Samuel’s legs in his basketball shorts as we sat together on the car ride back. There was a hint of his adult shape in the girth of his thigh, thicker than the gangly lines I’d observed in previous years. I would leave for Manila early in the morning and then get on a plane to California. So I allowed my fantasies about Samuel to wander underneath those shorts, to parts of him I would never reach.

The entire gang decided to return to Samuel’s house to play basketball, but I told them I was tired and wanted to rest. Samuel offered to let me take a nap in his bed and led me through the back of his house and into his room, a part of the world I’d never been, with a low bed, plain navy blue sheets, and basketball posters on the walls.

I lay down and watched as Samuel took off his white shirt and threw it on the bed beside me, then pulled out a basketball jersey from his closet and put it on.

“I’ll come back when we’re done,” he said as he closed the door.

I stared at that pile of white cloth at my arm’s length, the nearest I could ever be to my friend, yet also the furthest, because that shirt represented the very intimacy the two of us could never have, and reaching for it would betray a person who had only been kind to me. But knowing I wouldn’t see him again for many years, I grasped that shirt and held it to my face, took a deep breath as I stored his scent inside me, knowing I would never be that close to him again. It was just as well, since I couldn’t imagine that he would want us together the way I did.

“You’re awake,” Samuel said when he came back to check on me, sooner than I expected. The shirt lay safely at my side, but he glanced at it and looked me in the eye.

“I couldn’t sleep,” I replied.

“So what were you doing?”