Grant cradled his head in his hands. Joey realized she’d never seen him cry. On their first date in Florida, he’d told her about his older brother, Sean. How Sean was a marine in the Gulf who’d returned believing he was still at war. How Grant was fifteen when Sean came back. How twenty years later, Sean still had bouts of thinking he was at war. They’d been at dinner, a romantic place in Mizner Park, and Grant’s eyes had bored into their slice of key lime pie. He’d said the only time in his life he’d cried was the day his brother had come home. It wasn’t his brother anymore. Just some prisoner of a faraway war. Grant had said it was an irrevocable day. She’d wanted to throw her arms around him then, but she couldn’t in that fumbling beginning stage. Later when she could, she’d hugged him extra hard for his brother.

Joey feared Grant thought this too was an irrevocable day.

“Look,” she said. “Look. I’m not going to lie to you. I loved Leo once. I did. When we left each other that last summer, it was hard. For a long time, I thought about no one but him. But fifteen years is a long time. I moved on. Especially with you, I did.”

Grant lifted his face. His soft, brown eyes she called Baby Bear Eyes were shot with streaks of red. She’d discovered the Baby Bear Eyes soon into dating, when Grant told Joey that he didn’t think he’d really loved another person since Sean came back from war. That he’d believed scary things happened to the people he loved. That it had taken Joey to show him it might be worth it to risk it.

“I don’t know if you moved on,” said Grant. “I wish I did, but I don’t. It feels like I don’t know a lot of things about you.”

“You know everything about me. Everything! You know watermelon,” she said, referring to their time in Bali when Grant had asked her simple questions to get to know her, and she hadn’t been able to spit out the answers. Watermelon versus papaya, he’d posed, and she’d found herself at a loss. He’d helped her find herself. What they had was so good, and real. How could she make him see that the two of them were the realest thing she’d ever had?

“We don’t have to let Leo affect us,” Joey whispered.

“Is he still here?” When she didn’t answer, Grant said, “He’s still here. Of course. Because the two of you are sitting on a bomb of a secret that you have to figure out. And because he still loves you.”

She didn’t want to pursue that one again. “Nothing has to change with you and me,” she whispered.