Is this his truth—some quiet, heartbreaking mistake? Part of me aches for this version of things, wanting to believe it so badly that it makes my teeth clench. The other part of me wants to scream that this tiny whimper of a drunken misunderstanding unraveled everything. It should have been something intentional, something enormous. Something worthy of what came after.

“If you’d have let me explain . . .” he says quietly, looking at me in bewilderment. “I called you over, and over—”

“I know you did.”

I was aware that Elliot called several times a day, for months. I never checked my old email account afterward, but if I had, there would probably be scores of unread messages there, too.

I knew his regret was enormous.

But that wasn’t ever the problem.

“I fucked up,” he says, “but Macy, even as bad as that is—and I know it was bad—was it really worth this?” He gestures between us. “Was it really enough to make you just . . . drop me? After everything? To not talk to me—ever again?”

I stare at him, plucking words from the masses and arranging and rearranging them into sentences. The Emma thing feels so small now. It was just the first domino. “We had this deep, unbreakable trust, you know—and you broke that, you did—but it’s not just that. It’s . . . it’s me. It’s been me, too.”

“You don’t think I deserved the chance to explain?” he asks, misunderstanding my incoherence, restrained emotion making his voice tight.

I can tell he’s waiting for an answer. And the answer is yes, of course he deserved a chance to explain. Of course he did. In an alternate reality, he would have called me later that day, and I would have answered.

“I loved you,” he says. “I have always loved you. There was never anyone but you for me, you knew that.”

I fumble through my words: “It was a really bad . . . it was a bad night—”

“I know it was bad, Mace.” His voice is growing harder, nearly disbelieving. “We were each other’s first love, first sex, first everything. But come on. That’s a knockdown, drag-out fight. That isn’t . . . disappearing for a decade.”

“It wasn’t just that.” My heart and mouth seem to agree that we cannot, in fact, do this right now.

Metal screeches against asphalt in my ears. I close my eyes, shaking my head to clear it.

“Do you have any idea what it’s been like?” he asks, getting more frustrated now in the face of my inarticulate fluster. “Every day, I woke up and wondered if that would be the day I’d see you again. And if I did, how would it go? I missed you, so much. I’m twenty nine, and I’ve never loved another woman.” He stares at me, unblinking. “And every woman I’ve been with knows it, unfortunately for them.”

I open my mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. He stares at me, bewildered.