And then, before I even got out of the car, Zeke was standing on the porch, staring at me. After twenty years, of course someone looks different, but really I was just softer, a little heavier, and my skin was clearer. It was still me, and if you saw me as a teenager, nothing would throw you when you looked at me now. Zeke was so lean, muscle and bone, like someone who ran marathons or climbed mountains. He had grown into his features and now looked kind of handsome instead of goofy, which saddened me a little, honestly. He looked like he was one of two things: a man who made coffee tables from reclaimed driftwood and sold them for three grand, or a man who was very, very suspicious of the circumstances of 9/11. I guess I’d thought, and it was stupid to think this, that Zeke would still be a teenager, that he’d look like how I remembered him. And it made it harder to get out of the car, to walk toward him, when he seemed like someone I didn’t recognize. I waved to him, or I held up my hand, and he nodded, like he’d been expecting me but had hoped I wouldn’t come.

“Hey,” I said after I rolled down the window.

He looked at me for a few seconds; I saw the flash of fear cross his face, but then he finally relaxed his posture. “Hey,” he finally said. “Hey, Frankie.”

“It’s been a really long time since I last saw you,” I said, and I wondered how it was possible for every single thing you said to sound so dumb, so weightless. I wanted to say, “I missed you,” but it wasn’t really true, I was now realizing. I missed teenage Zeke. This guy was a stranger. He was the person I had to talk to in order to get Zeke back. I got out of the car and walked over to him.

“It’s been twenty-one years,” he said. The last time I had been this close to him, my arm had been snapped nearly in half, my mouth bleeding, my whole world ruined. I could feel my heart beating so fast.

“Do you still go by Zeke or did you change it back or—”

“I go by Ben,” he said.

“It’s going to be really hard for me to call you that,” I admitted.

“It doesn’t matter,” he admitted, looking so sheepish. “You can call me whatever.”

“Can I come talk to you?” I asked. “It’s important.”