“Did you…?” I asked. Got a shrug in response. “And here I thought you didn’t have any luck in all the time I was gone.”

“So I had a boyfriend in high school. Tyler. He asked out Missy Byron and we dated for like, seven weeks. He wasn’t the cutest or the best or the most well-rounded individual, but he was kind and he was a gentleman, so I figured ‘good enough’. Is that shitty to say?”

“I dunno,” I said.

“Sometimes high school boys are like men, but brand new or the rougher edges aren’t quite sanded off, but they’re still men, you know? Young men. And sometimes they’re… half formed. And Tyler was half-formed. Needing a few more pieces before he was a complete person. But he was a first kiss and a chance to make a lot of stupid mistakes where I was selfish or dramatic or needed to figure out how to talk to people.”

“Sure,” I said. It was a pretty different experience from my own. I was ninety-five percent sure that when Vista thought of a ‘young man’ she was thinking of Gallant.

“And we messed around but we didn’t mess around. Then somewhere along the line we mutually ghosted one another, I guess. And from there I had a Wards summer camp thing, and it was kind of like High Hill Bravo except we kind of had to be way more careful about it. We knew we were only there for three weeks, and we wasted a week before I had the courage to approach him, so there wasn’t any time for being polite. Got a lot of things out of the way.”

“I get you.”

“And after that, Gold Morning and mourning… there are people who find comfort in other people’s arms and I’m not one of those people.”

I nodded, vigorously.

“And then High Hill Bravo. Kind of. But that was kind of because there’s nothing to do except ‘hurry up and wait’, it was so far from home, and all the other stuff I talked about. But never someone I was into. Just kind of reminding myself I’m not… broken, I guess? After losing everything.”

“Not broken,” I said. I nodded, then nodded more vigorously. “Yeah. Yeah.”

“You?” she asked. “I kind of know the answer, but I don’t want to just talk about me.”

“Me? And boys? Gallant.”

“Would you, given a chance?”

I drew in a deep breath.

“Yeah. But I don’t know what that chance would look like. Would I want a fling, no stakes, yet somehow also have allll of the baggage I bring into it? I don’t know how that works. A serious relationship?”

“You asked that one more like you were asking me instead of asking a rhetorical question.”