It takes me a solid hour to look through all the photos. By the time I’m done, I’m a total mess, snot running from my nose, tears trailing lines down my face, but something inside me has lifted. Something that’s been tearing at me for a year. Longer. Something that started when Jordan and I grew up and apart, got bigger when I started partying and lost myself, and took over my whole soul after the shooting. Somewhere along the way, I forgot what is true: Jordan and I loved each other—before anything else, that was the absolute truth of my life.

I’m still staring at the photos when my phone rings.

It’s Lucy.

“Did you look at them?” she says to my hello.

“Yeah.” I swallow hard. There’s a lump the size of the Mount Everest in my throat.

“I went through all the old photos on my phone and on Grann’s phone, and your mom sent me some, and I printed them all out….I wanted you to see it, May. To be able to hold the proof in your hands. That you were happy. That Jordan was too. That you loved each other. You need to remember history as it actually happened, not as your brain is trying to get you to see it. Not how that asshole is trying to get you to see it.”

“I still said that to him. I still did that—”

She cuts me off. “May, you were fucking drunk. Anyone could have said that shit about someone they loved who was annoying them. You weren’t the person who turned drunken words into something so awful. You didn’t tell him to do anything. You didn’t do anything but survive. You survived, and that’s okay. Jordan wouldn’t have wanted you to come out of that closet; he wouldn’t have blamed you for staying in there. He would have wanted you to live. Fucking live, May.”

Tears are streaming down my face, and I can barely speak around the lump in my throat. “I can’t—I’ve tried….”

Lucy doesn’t let me get away with that—she never has. “You haven’t—and you can. You can. If you don’t want to do it for yourself, do it for me. For Jordan. For everyone and everything we’ve lost. I love you, May. Jordan loved you. Please. Try.”

A small moan escapes my mouth. I think about the photos—about all the moments Jordan and I had together and all the moments we won’t have. I want nothing more than to dive back into the safety of my bed and never emerge, but I know Lucy’s right. Jordan would have hated seeing me this way: a ball of pain and anger and regret.