God, what a weird place to begin. But when there’s a mountain ahead of you, I guess you start with a single step to the straightest point ahead. “I was meeting Sabrina for coffee.”

He scrunches his nose in a painfully familiar expression of incomprehension.

“My college roommate,” I clarify. “She lives in Berkeley.”

Elliot deflates a tiny bit, reminding me that he doesn’t know Sabrina. It used to bother us when we would have a month in between updates. Now there are years and entire lives unknown to each other.

“I called you,” he says. “Like a million times. And then that number changed.”

He runs his hand through his hair and shrugs helplessly. And I get it. This whole fucking moment is so surreal. Even now it’s incomprehensible that we let this distance happen. That I let this happen.

“I know. I, um, got a new phone,” I say lamely.

He laughs, but it isn’t a particularly happy sound. “Yeah, I figured.”

“Elliot,” I say, pushing past the clog in my throat at the feel of his name there, “I’m sorry. I really have to run. I need to be at work soon.”

He bends so that he’s level with my face. “Are you kidding?” His eyes go wide. “I can’t just run into you at Saul’s and be like, ‘Hey, Macy, what’s up,’ and then you go to work, and I go to work, and we don’t talk for another ten fucking years.”

And there it is. Elliot was never able to play the surface game.

“I’m not prepared for this,” I admit quietly.

“Do you have to prepare for me?”

“If there’s anyone I have to prepare for, it’s you.”

This hits him where I meant it to—straight in the bull’s-eye of some vulnerable nucleus—but as soon as he winces I regret it.

Goddammit.

“Just give me a minute,” he urges, pulling me to the edge of the sidewalk so we aren’t obstructing the steady stream of commuters. “How are you? How long have you been back? How is Duncan?”

All around us, the world seems to go still.

“I’m good,” I say mechanically. “I moved back in May.” I am obliterated by his third question, and my answer comes out trembling: “And, um . . . Dad died.”

Elliot lurches slightly backward. “What?”

“Yeah,” I say, voice garbled. I am struck dumb by this, struggling to rewrite history, to rewire a thousand synapses in my brain.

Somehow, I’m managing to have this conversation without completely losing my shit, but if I stand here for two more minutes, all bets are off. With Elliot right here asking about Dad, and going on two hours of sleep and the prospect of an eighteen-hour day ahead of me . . . I need to get out of here before I melt down.

But when I look up at him, I see Elliot’s face is a mirror to what’s happening in my chest. He looks devastated. He’s the only one who would look that way after hearing that Dad died, because he’s the only one who would have understood what it did to me.