I’d been begging to be allowed to take a part-time job since arriving in Florida, wanting my own source of income and a reason to get out of my dad’s condo after school for a few hours a day. It had been tough convincing my dad that I could keep up with my schoolwork and hold down a job. But he’d caved when I was offered a part-time position at Oscawana Pavilion Assisted Living Facility. I guess he figured I couldn’t get into much trouble surrounded by senior citizens. There was no way he ever would have let me work at Shake Shack or Starbucks with people my own age.

“Do you have to wear a uniform?” Henry asked. His uniform at the hotel was a light blue polo shirt and a pair of white shorts. I frequently teased him that it made him look like he’d just stepped out of a chewing gum magazine ad from the 1980s. The truth was that he’d gotten very tan in the last few weeks, and he looked so hot that I was sure he was receiving plenty of attention. Something about the probability of women in France noticing Henry made me anxious, although I knew I shouldn’t have cared about his romantic endeavors. I would have forfeited my morning chats with Henry in a heartbeat if it had been an option to instead talk to Trey every day. But I still sensed that I might have felt more than a twinge of jealousy if the morning conversations were to stop because Henry had found a girlfriend.

“Not really a uniform. Just pink scrubs. The nurses wear blue ones.”

“Scrubs, huh? Send me a picture.”

Back in February, I would have blushed, but we joke-flirted back and forth with such frequency now that it didn’t even occur to me to be bashful.“Why do you need a picture? You know what I look like. You’re looking at me right now.”

“Yeah,” he said, “but it’s not like I can see you. You’re practically in the dark.”

He wasn’t exaggerating; I was still in bed and hadn’t pulled the curtains open yet. “That’s because I’m wearing pajamas and my hair’s a mess.”

“You’re gonna be late for school,” he said, raising an eyebrow at me.

“Maybe.”

Dad would never let that happen. It was quite clear to me that he and Mom were in some kind of silent competition about who was the more responsible parent. I’d gotten into a ton of trouble twice on Mom’s watch back in Wisconsin, and even though that wasn’t a reflection on the quality of her parenting at all, it fueled some kind of weird obsession of Dad’s to do a better job. If I wasn’t at the breakfast table downstairs within the next eighteen minutes, I could expect a knock on my bedroom door.

“I’ve gotta get back outside,” Henry said. “I’ve got a doubles match with a countess.”

“Sounds fancy,” I teased.

“Oh, it is.”

We said good-bye, and I wondered momentarily if the countess was beautiful. I didn’t want to think too much about it, but I was curious about why Henry made a point of checking in with me every day instead of walking down to the beach to eat lunch with his coworkers. Curious, but grateful for it. Our past had bound us in a way that was stronger than friendship. Our check-ins meant more to me than I suspected he knew; the few times he’d been a little late calling me, my heart had sunk at the possibility of him having moved on, found something—or someone—else to fill his time.