Before I fully realize what I’m doing, I unblock Celeste on social media and navigate to her profile.

For the sake of my own mental well-being, I’d blocked her back when we first broke up. It’s almost comical how easy it is to unblock her now, after eight years of keeping her tightly locked away in my past.

We’re not following each other now, of course, but her account is public, so I can still see everything. I’m surprised to see that she has over five hundred thousand followers. When we dated, she didn’t even have five hundred. I scroll through countless beautifully shot portraits, breathtaking pictures of Californian landscapes, and various promotional shoots with stunningly gorgeous models. I spot Gretchen in one of the shots, her long auburn hair glowing as she looks out at the Big Sur coastline during sunset.

So that’s how they met.

I keep scrolling until Celeste’s posts begin to blur together. Some naive part of me hopes that if I go far enough, I’ll find the reason why Celeste left me so many years ago.

But of course, I don’t.

Instead, toward the end of her page, I spot a picture that’s practically a jump-scare. A selfie of Celeste and me, back in college, her lips gently pressed against my forehead as we lie together on a picnic blanket. Celeste is taking the photo, and I still remember the words she said as she snapped it: “Just commemorating how much I love my beautiful girlfriend.”

We both look like babies, or at least, that’s how we appear to present-day, twenty-nine-year-old me. Our cheeks are flushed and still round with baby fat, and neither Celeste nor I has a single visible wrinkle on our faces. I’d turned twenty-one a few months before this photo, and I remember thinking I was a real adult, now that I could legally drink. Which is entirely laughable to me now.

I thought I had everything figured out then, since by that point, Celeste and I were talking about “grown-up things” like a getting a place together in Koreatown after graduation. Just like twenty-nine-year-old me had no idea James Matheson would suddenly break off our engagement, twenty-one-year-old me had no idea Celeste would upend our lives and disappear.

By the time I close Instagram for the night, I’ve made my decision.

I can’t work with Celeste until I know why she disappeared on me eight years ago. And I know just the place we can meet to talk about everything.

7: Gemma