James kissed the top of her head. “You must think about him all the time.”

She nodded, her chin against the forearm he wrapped tightly around her. “He’d be thirteen now, the same age I was when . . .” She hesitated, unsure if she should share the next thought with him. “Sometimes I picture him . . . sitting next to me in the front seat of the car when I drive home to Los Altos. I explain how to drive, how to merge onto the highway. He loved understanding the mechanics of how things worked.” Was it crazy that she had imagined him growing up alongside her, a way to recapture all the moments they had lost together?

“I’m glad you told me,” James said, nuzzling her head before drifting off to sleep again.

There it was, Karina thought as she lay awake in his arms, listening to his breath grow heavy. Izzy had been right. She’d told him the worst of her past, the worst of her truth, and he still loved her. He loved her, and she was worthy of his love.

* * *

As the end of the school year approached, Karina found herself dreading the separation she and James would have to endure. For nearly three months, they would be thousands of miles apart and, because of the remoteness of their locations, would have limited ability to communicate. James would be working with a trail repair crew along the Pacific Crest Trail, covering some 600 miles by truck and by foot. Karina was going to Ecuador for an internship with the Fair Coffee Co-op, a pioneer in organic farming, recommended by her professor, Dr. Choi. The prospect was exciting and scary, but Stephanie had bolstered her. “I would go in a minute, if it paid anything. And you might even lose that gringo accent,” she teased.

In the last week of school, after they’d both finished their final exams and papers, James surprised her by driving them out to a lake about twenty minutes from campus. There, under a tree, he laid out a plaid blanket and a spread of picnic food. After they’d enjoyed a languid meal of cheese, bread, grapes and wine, they lay back on the blanket and snapped a selfie of themselves. Her head rested on James’s chest, her hair splayed out like an ink blot around her face. James’s face was the best part. That’s what her eyes always returned to. He looked blissful.

She revisited that photo daily during the time she was in Ecuador. She spent her days teaching classes to the employee-owners in Spanish and writing a report documenting the co-op’s successful practices. At night, she lay in bed listening to love songs with her headphones, waiting for sleep to come. At the end of the summer, when Karina said her goodbyes, part of her felt guilty for having spent some part of the past ten weeks counting down until this moment, when she could return to the familiarity of home, of James.