I don’t like this answer. I want him to be joyful, loved, adored, full of everything, all the time.

“I’ll admit,” he adds, “I feel more of it being near you.”

It’s heady, knowing I have the power to deliver that.

“Are you happy?” he asks.

“I haven’t been,” I tell him, and feel him turn to look at the side of my face. “And being near you again has made me realize it.” We stop on a tiny, slippery bridge in the middle of the woods, looking at each other. “You make me feel so many things,” I admit in a hush.

He reaches up, gently pulling my ponytail through his fist. “Me too. That was always true.” Shifting his hand to smooth a palm over the front of my hair, he murmurs, “I wasn’t trying to talk you into staying with Sean, by the way. I just think you’re being too hard on yourself.”

My eyes narrow in skepticism. “Me?”

Nodding, he says, “I think you’re beating yourself up for being with Sean. It’s why I asked about Phoebe and . . .”

“Ashley?”

“Yeah. Ashley.” He uses the tip of his index finger to push his glasses up, and stares out at the thick trees in front of us. “You act like you’re with him only because it’s easy. But in some ways, he’s your dad in this scenario, and you’re the woman who came after your mom. Sean doesn’t have as much to give, but you understand why. After all, you wouldn’t want to try to replace anyone.”

I stare up at him in shock. In only a few sentences, Elliot has just explained why it makes sense for me to be with Sean, while simultaneously proving that he—Elliot—is the only person who truly understands a thing about me. I didn’t even see this truth until now.

“Why are you so good to me? After everything?”

Elliot tilts his head as he looks back at me. Of course he doesn’t see it skewed this way. He only knows his betrayal, not mine. “Because I love you?”

Emotion clogs my throat, and I have to swallow a few times to get the words out. “I don’t think I really noticed before how numb I’ve been. Or cared, maybe.”

I see the way this hits him, physically. “Mace . . .”

I laugh darkly at this, at how fucking horrible it sounds. “That’s awful, isn’t it?”

He steps forward abruptly, pulling me into his chest. One hand cups the back of my head, the other wraps around my shoulders, and it feels like I haven’t really cried in ten years.

then

saturday, june 3

eleven years ago

Dad and I packed up our lives for a summer to be spent in Healdsburg. Nervous clawing took up residence in my stomach. Everything felt different this summer: We’d finished junior year and were on the cusp of being seniors. School seemed more interesting, friends seemed less dramatic. And although Elliot and I hadn’t gone to my spring formal together—I hadn’t gone at all, actually—summer always felt like when things between the two of us shifted monumentally.