I wasn’t planning on braving big rigs and a seventy-miles-per-hour speed limit. And anyway, De Anza College isn’t too far from our house and taking side streets only extends our trip by about ten minutes. We’ve waited almost a year to get the vaccine, so I think we can handle taking the slower and safer route to get us there—even if it traps us together for longer than either of us would like. Unsurprisingly, we don’t say another word to each other for the rest of the drive. When I pull into the parking lot, a volunteer asks to see our appointment paperwork and our IDs, confirming that we are in fact eligible to get our shots. Right now, no one over the age of thirty is qualified to get the vaccine, even if they have a preexisting condition. Priority’s been given to the most vulnerable, and for once, that’s the young.

We are directed to drive through a series of orange cones that have set up enough lanes in the parking lot to avoid a traffic jam in the street, and I’m terrified I will run over all of them. My leg starts to tremble from nerves as I follow the signs that direct us through loops in a massive parking garage. The line of cars in front of us looks endless, and we are moving at a painstakingly slow pace. I try not to think about how screwed we’ll be if an earthquake hits right now and instead focus on why we’re here.

As we inch closer to the vaccination site, Neda gazes out the window.

“It’s been quite the year, hasn’t it?” she says pensively.

I’m not sure if it’s a peace offering, but it’s the first time she’s struck up a conversation with me in a long time. She decided to fly east a few days before me, and I’m pretty sure it was because she didn’t want to be stuck on an airplane with me for five hours.

“It has,” I agree. It does feel like we should acknowledge everything we’ve gone through leading up to this moment. “Neda, I’m really—”

But she cuts me off before I can apologize for, ballpark, the trillionth time.

“It wasn’t the first time Gideon did something like that. At school, about a month into dating, he made out with some girl who lived down the hall from me.”

“Oh.”

“I wish you would have told me that he was flirting with you. Or that you were flirting with him or whatever was going on. But he’s the bad guy here. I think I just felt so stupid that I forgave him the first time, and that it happened again… with the person I care about most in the world.”