He won’t look at me, and I don’t know what to say, anyway. I know why he’s upset, even if it’s not really fair.

“I had to try,” I finally say.

He starts walking away from me.

“You could have tried with me!” he yells over his shoulder.

“No, I couldn’t!” I yell back.

He turns and stomps toward me.

“Really? Why not?”

“Because! It would . . . It would ruin everything!”

“How do you know?” The hurt pulses across his face.

“I just do, OK? I didn’t really want to kiss Evan, but he was just . . . there. And I thought if I let him kiss me, I could know for sure that —” The thumping in my chest turns to a horrible ache.

“Know for sure what?” he asks quietly.

“That I wouldn’t feel anything. When a boy kissed me. And I was right. We kissed and nothing happened.” A tear, then another, escapes down my cheek. “I didn’t feel anything.”

He looks at me carefully, as if he’s trying to figure out what that means.

A sob bumps out of me, and more tears escape down my cheeks.

“What’s wrong with me?” I ask.

“Don’t be so overdramatic. Nothing’s wrong with you. You know what this means.”

“What does it mean?”

“What you’ve always known.”

“Don’t be mysterious,” I say, even though I know exactly what he’s implying.

“I’m not going to spell it out for you, Rachel. You’re the one who needs to accept it.”

“I don’t know how.”

“Well, what do you want me to do?” he asks.

“Stop being so cold and angry. Stop acting like I have a choice. Say that we’ll always be together anyway.”

I wipe my cheeks with my hands and sniff, but I can’t stop crying.

I want him to hug me, but I know he isn’t going to. He’s the only person on the planet I can even try to talk to about this stuff, and he’s too disappointed to want to help.

I stand there and let my tears continue to slip down my cheeks. He doesn’t try to make me feel better. He just stares at me, and I blink back at him.

Finally he rolls his eyes and takes my hand and pulls me along the road like he did when we were little. I let him, but it doesn’t feel the same as it did back then. It doesn’t feel like he wants my hand in his. Like he wants to take me home to safety. Like he wants to be with me at all.

When I picture myself at the far end of the pool with Evan, and imagine how Micah must have felt watching us, I don’t blame him.