Joey felt something close around her throat. It was a sensation that had surfaced for years after their last summer, that had arisen on every date she’d pep-talked herself into going on. She’d be drinking a frozen yogurt shake with a guy at that place on campus decorated with the goofy customer Polaroids, and all of a sudden, the panic—like the arc of a dive into a pool with no water. After a decade enduring it, she’d finally gotten a therapist who’d prescribed anti-anxiety meds.

As Joey returned herself upright, an unexpected sentence dangled on the cliff of her tongue, trying to scramble back to safety. But then unwittingly, it tumbled down.

“I saw you everywhere, Leo.”

“What’s that, Jones?”

Joey could pretend she hadn’t said it but suddenly she needed it out, needed him to know how much she’d been affected. “I saw you everywhere after our last summer,” she whispered, and felt herself slowly deflate.

Was she really going to be vulnerable like this to him, after all the secrets and lies? She attempted to pull the sentences back down her throat, but already they were sliding out. “I walked into a convenience store in Philly, and there you were, picking out deodorant. You were at all the big milestones. My graduation from college. From law school. I’d chase you around the corner, and I was always heartbroken when a stranger peered back at me. You know, I once…once I went to Nice.”

“You…came to Nice? You knew I lived there?”

“Yeah. I convinced a few girlfriends. I promised them glitz and glam. We’d go to the casino. We’d find hot French lovers.” Joey burrowed her foot into the sand. “It was the worst trip of my life. The last night I pretended I was sick so I could stay behind at the hotel. It had been ten years since I’d seen you. Ten. And I hated myself for still thinking about you, after you broke up with me so abruptly like that. I hated myself for the real reason I’d orchestrated the trip.”

“Jones…”

“But the worst part was that I didn’t see you! Facebook said you lived there, but you were nowhere. I made my friends walk the harbor. I had all the excuses—exercise, scoping celebs. But of course I was just hoping to…I don’t know…accidentally-on-purpose bump into you.”

Joey paused, reliving every beat. She felt utterly transported, and dizzyingly sad.

“But eventually I had to fly back to New York. Without you, Leo, but also without me too, in some ways. Am I even making sense? Anyway. Yeah. Sorry if I’m ruining some fantasy you had, that I sailed off from that last summer into some un-fucked-up life.”