She sets two bowls of beef stew on the table, along with a basket of rustic bread and butter. I dip the bread into the broth, pushing aside carrots and potatoes and hunks of beef, then fill my spoon with the hearty stew. “Really good, Sefina,” I say.

“Thanks; glad you like it.” She puts her spoon down, leans forward. “I heard you ran into Tate?”

The news is an electric shock that I try to conceal from Sefina by eating a spoonful of stew and training my eyes on the notebook.

Tate Dunn is back and he knows everything. I brush a piece of hair from my face, glance out Sefina’s window to collect my thoughts. Outside, the sky is dry but dark with gray clouds that make her apartment light glow in comparison. I stare at my faint reflection in the glass, and it gives me pause. Thin lines weave out from my eyes. I look much the same as I remember but different, too, the impression of the years on my skin in ways I don’t feel inside.

Tate Dunn is back and he knows everything. I want to remember this bit, want it seared into my brain. In my mind he stands before me in the lobby of BTI, dark hair long around his face, shoulders broad on a thin frame. I’d sneaked out to meet him when I was fifteen, tiptoed past Ruth asleep on the couch. It was only one of many times we broke the rules together. Mom had been gone for two years by then, and Dad was still driving, waiting for the building manager position to open up. Ruth had fully stepped in, practically moving in when Dad was on the road, making me breakfast every morning before school, dinners at night. I was capable of staying by myself, but Ruth would have none of it. She said a teenage girl needed someone around, and while I loved her for it, my mom’s absence had left a hole inside me, and amid hormones and a growing anger, it ached with a loneliness that only Tate seemed able to fill. We went to the Buckner Building with flashlights and blankets and a joint. The scarred and lonely building was our version of a clubhouse, and we went there whenever we needed to get away, never venturing much farther than the loading dock. Outside the building that night, we stood eye to eye, and Tate reached out to tuck a blonde flyaway behind my ear. You look pretty with your hair like that. I can still remember the way my skin tingled at his touch and how all I could do was stand there and blink. Then he kissed me—just a brief meeting of our lips, but it flooded me with a sweetness that left me longing for more.