“Rachel.” Elliot’s voice is a blade, cutting through the room. I’ve never, ever heard him use that tone before, and it sends goose bumps down my arms.

I continue to look at him, and it takes monumental effort to not fall apart thinking about what I’m missing here. I know what my life looked like after we split, but I couldn’t bear to think about his, too.

“I’m pretty sure we fucked each other up,” I say. “I think that’s what we’re trying to fix, isn’t it?” I look back to Rachel. “None of this is your business, though.”

“It was my business for five years,” she says. Five years. That’s how long I had, too. “And it was really my business for at least one.”

What the fuck does that mean?

Elliot reaches up, scrubbing his face. “Do we have to do this?”

“No.” Rachel looks at him, and then at me, and then moves across the room to pick up her purse, and walks out the door.

then

friday, august 25

eleven years ago

Summer vacation ended on a scorching day in August. Dad, Elliot, and I packed up the car, and then Elliot shuffled conspicuously to the side, waiting for our customary goodbyes.

This was the fourth time we’d done this—the parting of ways after a summer of long afternoons together—but it was by far the hardest. Everything had changed.

As it had always been with us—two steps forward, two steps back—we hadn’t kissed again, and we certainly hadn’t spent any more time grinding on the floor. But there was a new tenderness there. His hand would find mine while we read. I would doze off on his shoulder and wake with his fingers tangled in my hair and his body loose with sleep beside me, my leg thrown over his hip. It felt, finally, like we were together.

Dad seemed to sense it, too, and after closing the hatch to his new Audi wagon with a firm click, he smiled tightly at us and walked back into the house.

“We should talk about it,” Elliot said quietly. He didn’t really have to explain what he meant.

“Okay.”

He took my hand, leading me to the shade between our homes. There we sat, our backs to the side of the house and our hands interlocked, in a patch of grass beneath my dining room windows, out of view of anyone in either house.

“We fooled around,” he whispered. “And . . . we touch like . . . we’re more than friends.”

“I know.”

“We talk to each other and look at each other like we’re more than friends, too . . .” He trailed off and I looked up, catching the tenderness in his expression. “I don’t want you to go home and think I’m doing those things with anyone else.”

My mouth twisted, and I pulled up a long blade of grass. “I don’t want to think of you doing that with anyone else, either.”