Having not seen him for over two weeks, just the sight of him makes me want to run up to him and kiss him and hold him and not let go of him for at least twenty minutes. I clench my fists and stay very still as he walks up to me. God, everything about him is so perfect.

“Hi,” I say, as he stops and leans against the tennis court fence in front of me. I try to think of something else to say, but nothing comes to mind except ‘you are beautiful’ and ‘I love you’.

“Hi,” he says, with a nervous smile.

There’s a pause.

“I got the photo,” he says, and then shakes his head. “Well, duh. Here I am.”

I huff out a laugh. “Genuinely the most embarrassing thing I have ever done.”

“And you call me embarrassing.”

“That photo was pretty embarrassing, though.”

“True. We’re actually both pathetic.” He grins and I feel a pang of hope.

“You didn’t text me back, bitch,” I say, because that’s what we always say when one of us doesn’t text the other back.

But instead of his usual funny retort, Nick just blinks and says, “You were just sending me blank texts. I thought it was a glitch or something.” He pulls his phone out of his pocket and shows me his messages. There’s the one I sent him five minutes ago, and then there’s just blank message after blank message.

Oh.

Right.

“Why, what did they say?” Nick looks at me curiously.

“Oh… I was, erm… sending you all the pictures, like, one-by-one…” I run a hand through my hair. “That’s so awkward. Wow. Sorry.”

“Pictures of us, you mean?”

“Haha… yeah…”

“I don’t think this phone can get picture messages anymore.”

I stare at him. “Can’t it?”

“Don’t think so. You know I dropped down the stairs it a couple of months ago? It’s been doing some weird things since then.”

I shake my head, amazed. “I knew you’d dropped it but I didn’t know about the photo thing.”

He shrugs. “Neither did I.”

“Oh.”

“Can I see them now?”

He’s not laughing at me. He’s serious. He doesn’t think this was stupid.

“Yeah.” I take my phone out of my pocket and we scroll through the pictures one-by-one, laughing at the stupid ones and pausing on the cute ones. Occasionally we get to one that reminds us of an old day out and we stop and talk about it and remember, remember the silly dates we’ve been on and the terrible ones and the great ones, the repetitive days we spend indoors and outdoors, at school and at home. By the end, we’re both sitting on the asphalt with our backs against the fence, the sun shining off the brilliant green court and the white of our shoes.