“I mean … yeah. I felt really guilty at first. Because I wanted to have a good senior year, I didn’t want to be missing my girlfriend who was a thousand miles away.”

I want to be mad, but I get this. I get not wanting to be attached to someone who is clear across the country. Except unlike Aiden and I, Zander and I were already attached.

“But then once I was up north, it felt like a normal summer. You’re not usually up there, you know?” He shrugs. “And every time someone would ask me about senior year, I’d imagine you there. I couldn’t think of senior year without you, Liv.”

“But I’m not going to be there, Zander. I’m going to be in Arizona, across the country, just like you didn’t want.”

“What if you weren’t moving to Arizona?” he asks.

“Then none of this would have happened?” I say, exasperated.

“I love you, and—”

I shake my head. “No.”

“No?”

“No, you don’t love me.” My skin is hot, and I swear to god, I’m about to dive out of this boat and swim back to shore. If I thought I had any chance of making it, I would.

“I talked to my parents,” he says.

“Good.” I was starting to worry I would have to march over to the Belles and tell them myself. Did Zander think they wouldn’t notice when I went MIA for the entire summer?

“You can stay with us.”

Wait, what? “Your parents are going to let your ex-girlfriend live at your house senior year?”

He doesn’t say anything, but his eyes drift out to the water.

Oh my god. “They still don’t know?” I drop my chin to my chest and roll my head around, like maybe if I work the stress out of my neck, I can work out this mess he’s made too. “Zander—”

“If you stay, it doesn’t matter. We’ll finish senior year together, and we’ll go to college, and it will be just like we planned. I didn’t tell them because it doesn’t matter. We can just pretend like it didn’t happen. It shouldn’t have happened.”

I don’t say anything, because none of it sounds real.

Zander’s voice is soft when it cuts through the silence. “Couples break up and get back together all the time, Liv.”

I could stay in Riverton. I could have the life I always wanted—Zander, our perfect life, his perfect family. But this summer isn’t that easy to forget. And I don’t know if Zander is perfect for me anymore. Or maybe it’s just that I’m not the same person I was two months ago. Because I can’t see myself in those dreams anymore.