‘I also want to say sorry for—’ he starts, then stops. ‘Can we talk about this? About what happened back in school? Because you never want to talk about it.’

I have a sudden flash of Lauren not wanting to talk about Dad with me. Am I being like her, avoiding the hard stuff? No, this is different. Or maybe it’s not. I look at Jesse, and say, ‘We can talk about it.’

‘Okay,’ he says. He seems nervous now. ‘Well, I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry. I’ve felt bad about it ever since.’

‘I accept your apology,’ I say, careful not to say ‘I forgive you’ because I don’t know if I do, not yet. ‘But I want to know why you did it,’ I add.

‘Oh. Well, it’s complicated. Or I guess it’s not. I was an immature dickhead.’

He pauses, and I give him a keep-going look. We both have our heads leaning back against the couch, facing each other.

‘Okay. Um,’ he says, and laughs, looking uncomfortable. ‘I liked you. I had a crush on you. I mean, obviously I did. I kissed you.’

‘And then you very publicly rejected me,’ I say.

‘Yeah. That part was awful. I panicked. I thought…I thought you pulled back after the kiss, I thought you were rejecting me, that I’d put myself out there and been rejected. And the kiss was bad. I knew it was bad. It was all too fast because I had no idea what I was doing. The whole thing was so embarrassing. Then suddenly I had an opportunity to, I don’t know, recover and look cool in front of other people, and I took it. It was a shitty thing to do.’

‘It was shitty. And then at school you told me our story was crap.’ I don’t want him to forget that part.

‘That was only because you ripped up my map,’ he says, smiling a little.

‘And that was because of what you did!’ I say. I am acutely aware of how inconsequential it all sounds, what a tiny thing it is in the scheme of everything. There is war, disease, climate change, and I’m going on about hurt feelings from five years ago. I almost want to laugh. And yet—the pain of it was real then. It’s still real to me now.

‘I’d just moved to a new school and I wanted to fit in. But that’s not an excuse. I was a terrible person.’

‘You weren’t a terrible person. That’s the thing. We were friends and you ruined it.’

‘I know.’ His voice is quiet and serious now. ‘I know I ruined it. I used to spend all day looking forward to seeing you on the bus. I would save up things to tell you. And then we didn’t talk anymore. You hated me.’