“I’ve missed you, too,” I replied honestly.

He pulled back and studied my face. “Really? I’m surprised you’ve had the time, as busy as you’ve been with your new boyfriend.”

I rolled my eyes, but I wasn’t sure why. Was it because I was home, in the arms of a boy I had known my entire life, and that was the exact reaction my fifteen-year-old self would have had? Or was it because my heart knew something that my head didn’t?

“I’m thinking about moving in with him,” I said nonchalantly, as though we hadn’t all but decided what our future would hold, as if I wasn’t planning on packing boxes next week.

“Do you have to?” he replied without skipping a beat.

I laughed. He’d caught me off guard. “I mean, no. I don’t have to, but it seems like a good idea.” I paused. “Right?”

“You could move back to Palm Beach,” he said teasingly.

“And do what?”

He pulled me closer and said in my ear, “Whatever you want.”

If I thought my heart was racing before, now I was certain. Whatever I wanted. Did I want to be with Parker? Why, when I pictured a life with Parker, did it all seem so clear? What about his perfect, untainted memory of Greer? I could never compete with that. I was alive and imperfect. We would fight. We would be messy. We would have a real life together, and she would always be there in the background. Things with Harris were just simpler. They were grown-up. They were uncomplicated.

Before I could respond, Elayna, this nightmare of a girl I went to high school with, danced up beside us with Ray, her high school boyfriend-turned-husband. “Hey, girl,” she said, elbowing me, “I hear this one’s straight. You might want to hold on to him.”

I knew she was trying to be funny. Probably. And it was clear she was a little drunk. But, as okay as I had been seconds earlier, that didn’t sit well with me. Parker must have sensed it, because he took my hand and led me off the dance floor. Suddenly, all those warm and fuzzy hometown feelings were gone. Now I wanted to be anywhere but here. Sure, Elayna might have been the only person tacky enough to actually say that to my face, but that didn’t mean everyone else in the brightly lit town square wasn’t thinking or saying the same thing. I looked around for my mom and, when I didn’t see her, said, “Park, could you take me home?”

“Sure,” he said. He hadn’t let go of my hand, and no, I hadn’t made an attempt to get him to do so. I would grapple with that later. For now, instead of making me feel loved and a part of a community, the music filling the air and the sounds of chatter and laughter were making me feel even more alone.

It wasn’t until Parker and I were in his car, by ourselves, that I began to feel, once again, like all was right with the world.