I wasn’t sure what to say. But I felt captured in her gaze. Seen when I hadn’t experienced that for years, and certainly hadn’t known enough to miss it. And maybe it meant all the more that it was her gazing at me with such knowing depth. Clearly, I cared far more about her opinion of me than I’d allowed myself to believe, mostly because I’d assumed she found me lacking. The gentleness in her eyes made me want to fall into her and never come up for air. I hadn’t felt that type of kindness in so long. I reached out and put my hand over hers, needing so desperately to touch her. “I didn’t even know what I wanted, or needed, back then, Em. How could you have known?”

She sighed. She was so beautiful, especially now, gauzy light shifting over her face. She’d expressed regret about that time, but I had regrets too, ones that I hadn’t even seen clearly until very recently. “In that car on the highway outside Springfield,” I murmured, “you said you’d survived me leaving you once before.” She frowned slightly and tilted her head. “I did. I did do that, Em. I left and barely said goodbye. That wasn’t right. It’s not what a good friend would have done.” I understood now too why I’d sensed something unsaid when I’d denied lashing out at her in the wake of my mother’s death. She’d agreed, but I knew now that she would have preferred that to the stony silence I’d given her instead.

“I should have written to you, Tuck. I should have called. I could have reminded you that you were wanted and loved. Instead, I decided to pretend you no longer existed. It was a coping mechanism, but it didn’t work quite as well as I hoped it would.”

I felt so damn close to her, my throat full with the knowledge that I’d earned something back I thought was lost to me forever. Emily. My sidekick, my friend.

“Do you remember when I asked you to the prom?” she said.

The prom? “No. When did you do that?”

“A few months before you moved to LA.” She looked up at the branches above, one finger twisting in her hair. “I had this stupid fantasy that if we went to the prom together, we’d have this moment on the dance floor where you’d wrap your arms around me and look into my eyes and… I don’t know. Somehow it would set the whole world back in place and we’d return to those magical, golden days.”