“Huh?” The sun was setting, and she looked so soft in the light. It hurt, how she glowed. I questioned every one of my own feelings. “Yes, of course. I’m really quite happy.”

I swallowed. “I just feel like things got weird between us after our git rebasing.”

“Ah. That’s—” She threw her volleyball up and caught it deftly. She did this a few more times before answering. “That’s not your fault. I was thinking too much.”

It took me another block of colonial brick buildings to make myself press for more.

“About what?” I asked.

She, too, took her time. Throwing her volleyball up again, the same way I would tap at my keyboard.

“About you, I suppose.”

“What about me?” I braved.

She paused again. We had made it to the riverbank, the Boston skyline shining. She set her volleyball on the ground and perched on top of it. She gave me her gym bag to sit on.

“About how different your family is from mine,” she said finally.

I was disappointed. I was also certain, even from the few in-person interactions we’d had together, that she was lying. “My family is quite different from most people’s, I think.”

“But it’s so loving. It’s such a . . . family.” Then she told me about her older brothers, who were both doctors, and how her parents had expected the same from her. “What a cliché,” she laughed. When she was in elementary school and only scored the average on math and science tests, her parents had begun to lose hope.

“I actually think maybe I’m not bad at math,” she said. “But for pretty much all my life I thought I was worse than my brothers. My parents instilled that story in me, whether they meant to or not, and just like that I didn’t believe I could do many things.”

“Is that why you didn’t want to tell them about your change in majors?” I asked.

“Yeah.” She began to rock on top of the volleyball. “They still don’t know. They’re going to freak out. They’ve settled for economist. But your grandparents never told you there was something you couldn’t do, right? They seem so supportive. And that’s why I’m struggling to understand you. Someone who has had that much love and affirmation—I guess I’d expect you to be more . . . confident. Arrogant, even. More like the white boys in salmon shorts at Princeton.”

“I didn’t get into Princeton,” I said seriously, and she laughed.

“That’s not a problem. We met regardless.”

I hugged my knees.