“We’ve told each other everything. You even told me about the time you sneezed…” One half of his mouth turns upward in a wry smile.

Then I realize what story he’s talking about, because it happened when I was in high school.

“Oh my God, the pee incident? I told you about the pee incident?”

It wasn’t a lot of pee, but still I never told anyone about the sneeze-and-pee. No one but Aimee, and it’s only because she was there and I couldn’t stop laughing and needed to explain myself. And borrow a pair of shorts.

I laugh now, and he cracks a smile too.

“I can’t believe I told you about that. The … the fortune teller thing, I mean. The other thing either, but, uh…” I nod and look off into the sky. “I’m sorry. Everything I’ve heard since coming here … it sounds like I was kind of exhausting.”

He shakes his head. “Never exhausting for me. I think you exhaust yourself at times. Like when Clare cries and cries until she falls asleep in the middle of the room, little fists still balled up. Which, as I understand, you used to do as well.”

This makes me laugh again, and when I laugh, he does too.

God, his smile is beautiful. Straight white teeth, but a tiny, tiny gap on one side between his canine and molar. A perfect imperfection.

I’m not really sure what else to say, so I go with, “The music is fun.”

“They’re good.” He nods.

“The extent of my experience with Irish music is the dancing scene in Titanic.”

His head falls and he says, “God, you love that bloody film.”

“It’s so good!”

“I’ll never understand how someone can find comfort in a disaster story about a tragedy that killed thousands.”

“It’s not about that.”

“If you don’t remember anything, and don’t recall the millions of times you’ve made this case to me about this movie, then does it mean you also don’t remember the ten to fifteen times you’ve made me watch it with you?”

I bite my bottom lip in response.

He exhales loudly. “What a right waste of time that was.”

I tut my tongue and say, “Whoever you are, it seems like maybe you have no taste.”

He drops his chin at an angle, giving me a challenging stare. “You certainly seem like the same old Meg.”

“Really?”

He looks at me and then covers his mouth as he leans back and considers me. He lets his hand drop as he says, “You know, in a way, I sort of want to believe you forgot everything. To start over with you. We’ve made such a mess of things. I wonder if we would have been better off meeting now.”

My lips part and I say, “I don’t understand how we screwed it all up so badly.”