I stiffened. “He just stepped away for a minute. He’ll be back.” I didn’t know if that was the truth. “What are you doing here?” On the tip of my tongue were the words Haven’t you done enough?

Elodie’s brow creased. “I had to come after you. I saw the way you looked at my work.” Before I could stop her, she’d taken my hand. She held it between her own, and I tried not to think that just a few minutes ago, I’d been holding Levi’s hand instead.

“El, don’t.” I pulled free, holding my hand against my chest like an injured bird. “What do you want?”

I knew what she wanted, but I needed to hear her say it.

“I told my mom about us,” said Elodie.

My eyes widened.

“She … she didn’t really understand. But she was supportive. Mostly she just cried. She didn’t understand why I didn’t tell her. She thinks she’s been a bad mom for not suspecting sooner.” The words were flooding out of Elodie, a dam bursting free. She hung her head, then abruptly jerked her neck back up to look at me. “I told her for you,” she said, almost pleading.

“No, that isn’t fair.”

“Babe—”

“I’m with Levi now!” I said sharply.

I might as well have slapped her. Her head swung to the side and she clenched her eyes shut. I was saying words she didn’t want to hear. But she had to hear them.

“El, I’m glad you told your mom, but whatever you think is going to happen between us … it’s not. Okay? It’s just not. We had fun. We were each other’s firsts. But our summer is over now.”

“But I still love you,” she said in a small voice. Then, before I could stop her, she was leaning in. There was a recklessness in her eyes, and her impassioned charcoal sketches flashed into my mind. Even though I didn’t think she’d done this for the right reasons, for a tiny, microscopic moment, I wanted to let her kiss me.

But I’d been here before with Chad. Sometimes the past had to stay in the past. When you brought it into the present? Calamity.

“No,” I said. One word. Soft, gentle.

Her lips stopped, hovering an inch from mine. “But I did it all for you,” she said quietly. “If you don’t want me, it was for nothing.”

It wasn’t for nothing. But it was more for her than for me.

I kissed her on the cheek, and tried to ignore the taste of salt. I tried to pour everything I had into that tiny peck, every last bit of love that her leaving had wrung out of me. “You will always be my first love,” I whispered. “But we both need to move on.”