“I mean…” Aiden hesitates, and glances down quickly, like he’s not sure what to say. “I am. But also, you didn’t stop me.” He stubs his toe into the dirt again. “Why didn’t you stop me?”

I laugh a little—I’m nervous, and surprised by the turn this whole conversation has taken. “You should have called me.”

“What?”

“After you kissed me.” I raise my eyebrows and lean into the scolding-mom vibe I’ve got going on. “You should have called me. You shouldn’t have avoided me like I was some stranger you hooked up with at a party and would never see again.” I can’t believe I’m saying this out loud, being so honest about what I want from him. Maybe it was all the time we spent together on Saturday, talking about art, and how it made us feel. “That’s why I’m mad.”

“You’re not mad about the kiss?”

“Zander and I broke up, Aiden.” I don’t know why I say it. Why after all of this time it finally feels ready to fall out of my mouth. I’m also not sure why I didn’t say it sooner. Maybe it was the text today. The fact that it didn’t light me up like I had thought it would. I had been disappointed that the text was from Zander and not Aiden.

His eyes are glowing with a certain heat, but the way he’s looking at me, I’m not sure if he’s excited or mad.

“We broke up right after school let out,” I say.

“You never said anything.”

“You never asked. I didn’t exactly plan for us to be the kissing-in-stairwells kind of coworkers.” It sounds ridiculous when I say it out loud. “And I don’t go around announcing my personal problems to the world—”

“Only when the news crews show up?”

I laugh. “Right. Only then.”

There’s a long silence—I can hear the fire popping, the hushed voices in the distance.

Aiden puts his hand on my wrist, and lets his fingers trail down to mine. He leans imperceptibly closer and his voice is soft. “Can I kiss you?”

A million things go through my head—how angry I was at him this week, the text from Zander, and the fact that I could be leaving. I want to kiss Aiden right now—more than anything—but I also remember how I’ve felt the last few weeks after everything with Zander. The idea of going through that again at the end of summer is crushing. Kissing Aiden is almost certainly the wrong decision. Of course, at one point I thought dating Zander was the right decision. My personal judgment obviously can’t be trusted.