Once outside, I shaded my eyes against the sun. The street was quiet, only the low buzz of voices from the beach breaking the stillness of the late morning. The door of a shop opened, bell jangling, and I instinctively turned.

My breath caught.

Elodie.

Her curly brown hair was pushed over one shoulder. The sight of her bare neck shot prickles down my spine, electrifying toward the backs of my knees. She was saying something to her mother and swinging a shopping bag from her wrist.

I exhaled through my nose. The last time we’d spoken, we’d been at my lighthouse. The air had whipped our cheeks pink, sent our hair flying into tangles. She’d been crying, or I’d been crying, and all I could taste was salt as she’d kissed me goodbye for the last time. She wanted a clean break, a chance to leave and be someone new. She didn’t want midnight texts or silly Snapchats or longing confessions of how much I wanted her back. I would have gone with her, if only she’d asked. I would have been her secret for as long as she wanted, if only she hadn’t buried me along with the rest of her old life.

California had been good to her. Elodie was a natural golden-brown, but now she was glowing bronze from the sun, and more freckled. Unlike my skin, hers wouldn’t turn pale in the winter.

Mrs. Hawkins touched her ballerina bun like she was checking that it was still there. Satisfied that it was, she dropped her hand from her sleek platinum hair. Her heels, preposterously high, drew her to Elodie’s height, but even her summer tan couldn’t compare to her daughter’s tawny radiance.

Elodie and her mother were coming closer. Closer. I willed her to look at me. She had to see me standing there.

Elodie began to turn toward me, and my mouth lifted into a welcoming smile, but then—

She touched her mom’s arm and pointed toward a shop on the other side of the street. She was still too far away for me to make out what she was saying, but her mom nodded, and in one excruciatingly quick moment, their direction changed. They were moving away from me.

Horror rose in my stomach, my throat swimming with all the things I wished I could say to her: Why? Why? Why?

I tried to console myself by thinking she hadn’t seen me, but I couldn’t shake the sense that she had. That she’d seen me waiting for her, and had deliberately gone the other direction.

When she was on the other side of the country, she existed in vague ex-girlfriend terms. It had been easy to push the hurt away. But this Elodie was back in my town, memories given life. Flesh and blood.