“Seriously,” Beckett said, his voice firm. “I get them all the time. I’ve been getting them since I was a little kid. It’s not a big deal.” Todd looked from me to Beckett, swallowed hard, then scribbled something on his server pad. “And for you?” he asked me. “Do you want a… Roy?”

“She’ll take an iced tea,” Beckett said slowly, looking at me. “Less ice than normal, but with a lemon squeezed in. Mint if you have it.”

Todd hurried away, looking stressed, but I just looked at Beckett—thinking about Kat and my Starbucks and Margaux and Ruffles and now Beckett, who still knew my drink even after how I’d treated him, even after all this time. “You remembered,” I said, my voice a little strangled.

“You too.”

“You think I’m going to forget your cowboy drink order?” I shook my head. “Never.” I looked at him across the table. I was used to seeing Beckett in school, or working in the shop, scattered with a faint layer of sawdust. He didn’t look like that now. He was wearing a button-down, in a blue that brought out his eyes, the sleeves rolled up over his forearms. His dark blond hair, which turned curly if he let it grow, was as usual cut short.

I was suddenly flashing back to the last time we’d sat across a table and shared a meal together—just the two of us, not cast and tech crew splitting a pizza before a dress rehearsal. It had been late August, the week before school started again. At the Boxcar Cantina, where I’d broken his heart, and mine, all in one fell swoop.

We were halfway through our meal—enchiladas for me, a huge burrito for him, queso to share—when he’d taken my hand and told me, his voice shaking with nervousness and emotion, that he loved me.

I’d just sat there, my heart pounding, but not with happiness or excitement. Without warning, everything in me was screaming danger danger danger. And even though a part of me—a big part—wanted to say it back, because I loved him, of course I did… I couldn’t do it.

Suddenly, everything that had happened with my parents—the fallout, the riptide I’d been caught in the middle of—was looming in front of me, there in a booth at my favorite Mexican restaurant. And so even though I knew I was lying, that I was burning down something beautiful, I’d pulled my hand back from his and watched his face fall.

There really is no coming back from that—and we both knew it. When Beckett had said, as the mostly full dishes were cleared by a confused-looking waitress, “So I guess… that’s it?” I’d just nodded, knowing that as soon as I spoke, I’d start crying and I might not ever stop. And that had been the end.