UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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“VERY SUBTLE BEFORE, T,” I SAID, WIPING DOWN the coffee bar. “You should have Thursday Girl’s digits in no time.”

“Dude, don’t remind me,” he said, sweeping the floor in front of the counter with broad strokes. “You know how long it took me to work up the nerve to talk to her?”

It was seven thirty. The Mugshot dead zone. The after-yoga crowd had subsided and the café was dotted with the usual suspects: Hipster MacBook guy gripping his organic house blend while he stared at his screen; Homework Girls and their hot chocolates, although it seemed they were doing more laughing at me and Tanner than studying tonight. And Leif, feet up on the chair across from him, bowl of bright green pond water in one hand, a book titled Wherever You Go, There You Are propped open in the other.

There’d be one more rush after the last yoga class of the night but then my shift would be over. Strange as it sounded, I dreaded it. Being alone with my thoughts was a dark place these days. At least at work, there was always some distraction. New customers. A difficult order. The douchey Top 40 station that my manager, Grace, insisted we play, which spewed corny sentiment 24-7. It all kept me from descending into my own private pity party. I focused on the task at hand, which at this moment happened to be ribbing Tanner about his latest infatuation.

“But you didn’t actually talk to her; you pulled your serial-killer stare,” I said, mean-muggin’ to demonstrate. He stopped and rested his chin on the broom handle.

“C’mon, I wasn’t that bad, was I?”

“No comment,” I said, scrubbing a nonexistent spot on the counter.

“Damn, I can’t help it,” he said, sweeping again, although all he was doing was moving dust from one part of the floor to the other. I didn’t have it in me to lecture him on the proper use of a dustpan. “I even screwed up talking to her friend. What was her name?”

“Madison.”

“See, man, you got her name without any effort.”

“We had a normal conversation. I wasn’t angling for her name. You’re trying too hard, dude. Just, you know. Smile now and then. Make their drinks right.”

“She’s with someone, anyway.”

“Right. What did Madison call it . . . soul mate–involved? Bide your time, T, cuz once words like soul mate start getting tossed around, things turn to shit,” I said, taking my best three-point shot with the mop cloth to the sink and missing by a foot. I crouched down to pick it up. Homework Girls giggled.

“How do you do it?”

“Do what?” I popped up to face him but Tanner was standing in front of Leif. When he realized Tanner was talking to him, Leif placed his tea down.

“How do I do what?” he asked. Leif seemed like a pretty stand-up guy who could talk about Buddhism or the latest Joss Whedon flick with equal enthusiasm, but this was the first time Tanner had ever posed what sounded like a personal question. I tossed the mop cloth into the sink for real and leaned across the pickup counter to listen.

“You know . . . not get distracted when you teach?”

Leif looked at me. I shrugged.

“I’m not sure I’m getting you,” he said to Tanner.

Tanner gestured with the broom handle to punctuate his words. “All those yoga pants . . . I’d be walking around with a constant—”

“Whoa,” Leif said, laughing and putting up his hand.

I shook my head. Tanner Smith was a great bass player and a passable barista, but a puerile cretin when it came to the opposite sex. He had a point about the yoga pants, though. They’d been banned at school.

“Do you have some yogi voodoo shit that gives you special powers? C’mon, you’ve never wanted to . . . you know, get with someone?”

“It doesn’t work that way, Tanner.” Leif picked up his book again.

“Never been tempted?” I asked, fiddling with my infinity bracelet. The thin leather band had conformed to my wrist. I wasn’t sure why I still wore it, a reminder of what might have been—even if . . . Jess, just break ties already.

Something always stopped me.

“Temptation is part of life, isn’t it?”

“So you have wanted to bone a student,” Tanner said, pointing the broom handle at Leif.

Hipster MacBook’s gaze broke away from his screen for this answer.

Leif chuckled and turned a page. “No. When I’m in class, I’m a teacher, not looking to score. You do realize there is more to life than boning someone.”

Tanner looked at me, shook his head, and resumed sweeping.

“Guess I can strike ‘yoga dude’ off my career short list.”

The entrance bell chimed to announce customers. I glanced at the clock. A little early for the after-class rush, but I turned to man the register anyway.

And walked straight into a brick wall.

At least that’s what it felt like.

Hadn’t we set limits with this place?

Hannah. My Hannah.

Arm in arm.

With Duncan. My friend. My drummer.

Ex-drummer.

Ex-friend.

Together.

Still.

My feet moved in slo-mo, slogging through mud. Every step was calculated, as if the moment I stopped thinking about getting to the counter, I’d snap and go ape-shit instead. I knew odds were that I’d run into them as a couple at some point. I just never thought they’d come to me. My hands found the register. Numbers.

You can do this, Jess.

Avoiding Hannah had been impossible, since we lived on the same block, but I was able to get away with a nod or wave and then duck into my house or car. Duncan had been easier to lose, a limb I’d simply cut off and ignored in the hallways at school. All those nights in my room, imagining what I would do when confronted with the reality of HannahDunk, never included the scenario where I was mute behind the coffee counter, ready to take their order. If they were waiting for me to ask them, “How may I help you?” we’d be waiting for a very long time. What could they possibly want?

“Hi, Jess,” Hannah said, looking up at me with wide, unblinking eyes that still made my stomach feel like a chipmunk was clawing its way out. Duncan’s hand was planted on the curve of Hannah’s hip, the corner of his mouth upturned. She noticed me notice and shifted, putting a whopping inch between them.

“You should know we have a strict no-douchebag policy on Thursdays,” Tanner said.

“Nice to see you too, T,” Duncan said.

“What do you want?” I asked.

“Blueberry mango bubble tea,” Hannah said, biting her lip. “Nonfat milk.”

“Blueberry . . . mango . . . bubble . . . tea.” The words hardly felt like my own. I was playing the role of dipshit cashier monkey, and if it would get them out of Mugshot faster, I could handle it.

“And . . .” I looked squarely at Duncan. His hair was longer and the beard he’d been trying to grow since the summer had finally filled in instead of looking scraggly, his Dave Grohl–wannabe transformation complete. He took a breath as if to say something, then clammed up and shook his head.

“I’m good.”

That’s it? Screw with Hannah, break up the band, ruin my life, and the first words you say to me are “I’m good”?

“Three fifty-two,” Jesse, the dipshit cashier monkey, said. Duncan pulled a five out of his pocket. One dollar, four dimes, a nickel, three pennies. I deposited the change in his open hand and clapped Tanner on the shoulder.

“Got this?” I asked. He nodded. I walked to the back room.

“Jess, wait.”

I ignored Duncan and shoved through the doors into the back. Grace was in her office at the computer, her fingers flying across the keyboard as she worked on an Excel spreadsheet. I knocked on the doorjamb. She startled, took off her glasses, and rubbed her eyes.

“Hey, what’s up?” she asked, smiling.

“Would you mind if I left? The yoga rush is over and I have this killer physics test tomorrow and—”

“And leave Tanner here . . . alone? It’s only about another hour or two, do you really need to leave?”

Tanner had been at Mugshot for three months and had come up short twice on the register due to errors. And he was still learning the drinks. I knew he’d be up to speed soon enough, but leaving him here alone wouldn’t be doing any of us any favors.

“Can I at least grab my book out of my car, catch some study time during the lull?” I lied.

“Yep, great, Jess. Thanks,” she said, readjusting her glasses.

I grabbed my jacket and keys and headed out the back door. Cold air smacked me in the face, but it didn’t sting as much as . . . I’d seen them. Spoken to them. The earth was still on its axis. No sinkhole opened to swallow me up. Still. It felt as shitty as I thought it would. They’d have to take their order to go, right? I’d just sit in my car until they left.

I slid into the driver’s seat of my Beetle and reclined it, closing my eyes. Flash. Duncan’s hand on Hannah’s hip. His smug look. The image was burned into my eyelids. I fiddled with the bracelet, rubbing the curved infinity symbol between my thumb and forefinger. Why couldn’t I take this fucking thing off? Infinity. Forever, Jess. Bullshit. Was there even a chance she was still wearing hers?

Tap. Tap. Tap.

I jumped. Duncan’s face filled my window.

“We need to talk.”

Know what’s worse than seeing your ex-girlfriend with your ex–best friend? Getting caught trying to avoid them.

Duncan stepped away from the door to let me out. I jacked up the seat, pretended to look for something, anything, even though we were both painfully aware of the awkward situation. I found a stray straw wrapper and shoved it into my pocket before finally getting out and leaning against the door.

We stood in silence, glaring in opposite directions, which probably looked like a killer album cover. We could call it Betrayal.

“Get a new drummer yet?” he asked.

“Nah, still looking.”

Duncan and I had never officially talked about him leaving the band. I’d put up a sign on the message board at school and in the local rehearsal place to announce that Yellow #5 was looking for a drummer, even though I had no intention of finding someone new at that point. It was more of a passive-aggressive fuck you to Duncan, the quickest way to cut him as deep as he’d cut me. Four guys in two months had expressed interest. Tanner had collected the names, but we never had any auditions. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to find someone else. Maybe I thought it would all blow over and HannahDunk would come crawling back to apologize. Maybe that was what was about to happen. A long-overdue apology.

“I joined Plasma.”

Fuck me.

“Kenny Ashe’s band? Cool.”

“I guess. He couldn’t believe I left Yellow Number Five. I couldn’t either. Thanks for the heads-up.”

I glared at him.

“That’s your doing. Don’t even start with me.”

“You couldn’t call me? We couldn’t talk about this?”

“What’s to talk about, Duncan? You made your choice.”

“We could have worked this out, bro.”

“That’s where you’re wrong.”

“C’mon, Jesse. It’s been two months.”

“What do you expect from me, Duncan? To say, ‘No hard feelings, come back to the band. Hell, maybe Hannah can play tambourine now.’ We’ll all be one big, happy fucking family, until maybe Tanner tries to hook up with her.”

He squared his jaw, nodded. “Don’t.”

“Or what?” I asked, standing up straight. I never thought of myself as a violent person, but all I wanted to do was punch him in the throat. I’d been sick. Like, sick-sick, with some apocalyptic flu over Thanksgiving break, when they accidentally hooked up at a party. Acci-fucking-dentally. That’s how they played it.

Something happened, Jesse, Hannah had said.

I’d never in a million years thought that the something that had happened was Duncan. I still couldn’t believe it.

“You had a choice,” I said. “At some point, one of you had a choice.”

Duncan growled and walked away, then turned sharp and got in my face.

“That’s so fucking typical of you, Jess,” he said. “That this is something we did to you.”

“It’s not? What is it, then?”

“Maybe you should talk to her about it.”

“I’m talking to you.”

“I dig her, okay? She digs me. It has nothing to do with you. It happened.”

“Have a nice life digging each other,” I said, shoulder-bumping him hard as I walked past him to go back into the café.

“Jesse, I want the song.”

I spun back. “What?”

“You know what I’m talking about. The song. The one we were writing . . . you know . . . before . . .”

“You screwed my girlfriend.”

“Dude, stop already.”

“Duncan,” a soft voice called.

Hannah stood about three feet away from us, clutching her bubble tea in two gloved hands. Her shoulders hunched, she bounced on her toes, bracing against the cold.

“I’ll be there in a minute, babe.”

Babe. Knifepoint. Gut.

Hannah wouldn’t look at me. Had she heard the “screw” remark?

She turned and walked toward the corner to wait. She pulled off a glove with her teeth and took out her phone; the light from the small screen illuminated her features. Shivering, she brought the straw up to her lips. Who the fuck drinks bubble tea in February, anyway? Hannah. That’s who. I wanted to pull her toward me, wrap my arms around her to stop her shivering. Ask her how she could enjoy a drink that was like sucking fish eyes through a straw. The way I used to ask her. Used to.

“So—the song, Jesse.”

I sighed. “What about it.”

“If you’re not using it, I’d like it. We plan on doing an original for the battle.”

“What makes you think I’d hand over our song to Smegma?”

Duncan couldn’t help but laugh at the nickname we’d given Kenny Ashe’s band. He recovered quickly. “Because we wrote it together. It’s part mine.”

“It’s not finished.”

“You’re not using it.”

“Not at the moment, but soon, yeah, I will be.”

“I thought you said—”

“I lied, Duncan. You’re easy to replace. Drummers are a fucking dime a dozen. I already have a guy in mind, just have to make the call. Maybe we’ll do the original for the battle.”

“So you’ve applied already? Deadline is Monday, you know.”

“That’s why you came here? To get the song?”

Duncan shoved his hands in his pockets and looked up at the sky.

“Pretty much.”

“Not to apologize?”

He turned to look at Hannah and raised his hand to signal that he needed another minute.

“If I apologize will I get the song?”

“Sure,” I lied.

He squared his jaw again, narrowed his eyes, and then smiled, or more correctly, bared his teeth.

“I’m sorry I’m in love with Hannah. Sorry she’s in love with me. Sorry this happened right under your nose and you were too full of yourself to even notice that you treated her like shit. Sorry I didn’t give you or your feelings a second thought when I kissed her the first time. Sorry I still don’t. Wait, no, I’m not sorry for that.”

He stepped back, eyes hard.

“Just keep the fucking song, Jess. I’ll write a better one.”

With that, he turned and joined Hannah at the corner.

Neither of them looked back as they walked away.

I stormed into Mugshot and tore through the back room, knocking paper cups off a shelf in my wake.

“Jesse?”

I heard Grace’s voice but my rage was a wave; I pushed through the doors into the café with such force they slammed into the wall. Tanner and Leif stared at me.

Get a grip, Jess.

I took a few deep breaths and grabbed the nearest thing I could find to clean.

“You need to rinse these after you use them, T,” I said, grabbing the stainless steel container we used for frothing.

I turned on the hot water and started scrubbing the milk crust from the sides.

Tanner sidled up to me.

“Hey, um, everything okay, Jesse?”

“Fucking peachy.”

He grabbed another of the containers and started scrubbing alongside me.

“You still have those names? The ones who called from the flier?” I asked.

He stopped mid-scrub. “Does this mean—”

“We need to find a drummer.”

“JEEEEEEEESSSEEEEEEE,” my sister, Daisy, yelled up the stairs for the fourth time. From the decibel of her screech, I knew we were at Defcon Two. Next it would be Dad, threatening to take away the keys to the Beetle or . . . well, there wasn’t much else he could punish me with at that point. I’d become too skilled at punishing myself.

Stay in my room? If I wasn’t at work, my ass was in bed anyway.

Take away the Fender for a week? I hadn’t touched it since HannahDunk.

Put half my paycheck in the swearing jar? Fuck that.

I pawed around my desk for my phone and blinked the morning grit out of my eyes. 10:00 a.m. My tongue had been replaced with a bloated, hairy caterpillar.

Lemonade and vodka had seemed like such a good idea after our Friday-night Mugshot shift.

Saturday was McMann family breakfast day. The only time we were all under the same roof at the same time. Weekdays my mom crunched numbers for long hours. Sundays my dad would go off into his writing cave with strict orders not to be bothered. I worked most nights at Mugshot and spent afternoons practicing—or now, staring at the ceiling. Saturday-morning breakfast was my parents’ attempt to create a perfect family moment.

For the most part, I was okay with enforced family time. I offered up just enough details to satisfy my parents, laughed at Daisy’s lame knock-knock jokes, and made funny faces with baby Ty. Half the kids I knew had parents who were divorced. Mine still groped each other and “never let the sun go down on an argument.” And while I didn’t add much to the conversation since my breakup with Hannah, at least there was always bacon, well done, the way I liked it.

I tugged on the first pair of jeans I found on my floor, and ran a hand through my hair. Yee-ouch. My temples throbbed as I teetered downstairs. The morning was bright. Too bright. The pale-yellow walls of the kitchen burned my eyes like neon. I swallowed back a dry heave.

Friday after work, I’d gone over Tanner’s house with the plan to talk band strategy, which we did for all of two minutes. Yep, still needed a drummer. Will call those guys. Find audition space next week. That was the extent of it. Then the vodka flowed and the poor dude had to listen, once again, while I analyzed the fuck out of my breakup.

“Could you get the juice glasses, Jess?” my father asked. He stood behind the griddle, flipping pancakes in the air, performing for Ty, who sat grinning in his high chair.

It was a daunting task, but I gathered the glasses from the cabinet and placed them on the center of the table next to the juice carton. My ass was an inch above my seat when Daisy blurted:

“Jesse’s half-naaaaaaaayked.” She stuck out her tongue for emphasis. Proving, once again, that ten-year-olds are minions of the devil. It had only gotten worse after my breakup with Hannah. Daisy loved her. My mother looked up from the newspaper.

“Shirt, Jess,” she said.

I stumbled to the laundry room and grabbed the first white tee I put my hands on. My pocket vibrated. It was Hannah.

Oh hell no.

I leaned against the laundry room wall and slid down, as a memory from last night exploded in my brain. The drunk text. Three little words. If I didn’t answer the call, maybe that vodka-fueled moment of weakness would cease to exist.

“The cakes are getting co—hey, you okay?” My father peered behind the laundry room door. “You’re looking a little green around the gills.”

With great effort, I pushed my back against the wall and rose to standing, ignoring the dizziness I felt from getting up too fast.

“Yeah, fine, I’ll be right there,” I said. My phone buzzed, alerting me to the missed call and a voice mail. Great. This had to be bad. I listened to the message.

Hey, you. Meet me at the swings. Noonish. Please. We really need to talk, Jess.

After breakfast and a long, hot shower that finally made me feel human again, I pulled on a gray hoodie and headed out to the playground at the corner of our block. The afternoon was even brighter than the morning. I squinted to block out the sun. Normally I would have raced down the street, but I was in no rush. The message had put my brain into overdrive. As I walked, my mind reeled with scenarios of what exactly Hannah had meant by We really need to talk.

Of course, I knew what she meant. We did need to talk, because we hadn’t talked since the breakup. Or talked civilly, at least. I’d become an avoidance ninja, always ducking and disappearing, knowing the moment I locked eyes with her I’d be a goner. Hell, I couldn’t even get rid of the stupid fucking infinity thing on my wrist because that would mean we actually were finite.

Hannah was on a swing, spinning in a slow circle to twist the chain above her head. My mouth betrayed my feelings with a smile. I ran my fingers across the chain-link fence as I headed to the entrance. She picked up her feet, leaned back, and spun around. A grin that made my flat-lined heart feel the tiniest spark of hope, spread across her face. Maybe the We really need to talk would actually be a confession that Duncan is an ass-weasel, it’s you I love, Jess brought about by my innocent I miss you text.

Hope was snuffed out moments later when she saw me. She stomped her feet onto the padding below the swing and came to an abrupt stop, jerking forward with the momentum. The grin faded. She tried to stand up, but quickly sat back down.

“Ow,” she said, putting a hand to the back of her head.

I trotted over to her. Her hair was wound up in the chain.

“Wait, don’t move,” I said, crouching down and trying to get it loose without scalping her.

“Jess . . . be gentle. . . .”

“Don’t worry, I’ve done this before,” I said, chuckling and tugging gently at the strands of her hair until they unwound from the chain. My hand lingered, raking through the bottom of her hair for a moment past friendly. She gathered her hair in a ponytail, pulling it away from me and then letting it drop again. I shoved my hand into my pocket. Her cheeks and nose were pink from the cold.

Did she have to look so damn adorable?

I sat in the swing next to her, facing the opposite direction, and I straightened my legs and pushed back, gripping the chains, but standing still.

“I miss you too, Jess. It doesn’t have to be this way, you can say hello to me now and then, it wouldn’t kill you.”

“Ah, but it would,” I said, swinging. Big mistake. My head whirled. I dug my feet back into the worn rubber mat under the swing and stopped.

“Jesse.”

“Why him?” I asked.

The question stunned her. She looked down, rocking gently.

“I don’t know, it just . . . happened.”

“Things don’t just happen, Hannah.”

“You’re not being fair, Jesse.”

“Fair? Why am I the one who needs to be fair?”

“Do you want to talk or do you want to fight?” she asked.

I thought of all the times we’d sat, just like this, before we were officially together. Hannah was a friend, a crush, and then the best of both. At the yearly block party on our street, our parents always joked about how we were destined for each other. Her mother had even said once, “They’d make beautiful babies together,” long before either of us even understood what that meant. When we were younger, it was a source of embarrassment. In recent years, not so much. Jesse and Hannah forever. I’d never really thought about it, the “Jesse and Hannah forever” thing, but I never thought of our ending, either. I swung again, this time slowly.

“Did I really treat you that bad?” I asked. Duncan’s words had stalked me since our conversation.

“What?”

“Duncan said—”

“You pissed him off the other night, Jess.”

“Is it true?”

She sniffled, reached into her jacket pocket, and pulled out a crumpled tissue. She always needed tissues when the weather got below seventy degrees. If you looked in any of her pockets there’d be one, rumpled and close to disintegrating. Feeling mushy over snot rags. I’d reached a new low.

“The timing of it all sucked, you know?”

“Because I was sick?”

She looked at me and pressed her lips together like she wanted to say more but didn’t know how. Oh, fuck. This had happened before I got sick over Thanksgiving break. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. But I did, of course, want to know, being a masochist and all.

“It happened before then.”

“Way before?”

“You’re okay with this?” she asked.

“Sure,” I lied. “If we’re going to do the friends bit, we have to be able to talk, right?”

She looked at me skeptically.

“My birthday, Jess.”

Her birthday. Of course. I’d been a total jackass because I knew how much she’d been looking forward to her party. I lost track of time was a lame excuse, even though it had been the truth. It was hard to explain, and probably even harder for anyone to understand what happened to me when I got lost in music. I’d been working on Slash’s solo from “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” and I was killing it, just wanted to play it one more time. Time had no meaning as my fingers moved across the frets, burning the memory of the song into my muscles. I’d only gone into my garage to fool around with it for a little while, but a little while had turned into three hours, and I was late, like late-late, to Hannah’s sweet sixteen.

“And then the card.”

I dropped my chin to my chest, staring down at my feet. “It was personalized.”

“In crayon,” she laughed.

Hearing it now, I couldn’t deny it had been an idiot move. Why hadn’t I just stopped at Walgreens on the way? Or why . . . why hadn’t I bought one weeks before the party? Hannah loved cards. I knew that. Big, glittery, sparkly ones, ones that played music . . . even the cheap ninety-nine-cents ones for “just because.” I had a shoe box filled with them from her.

“Daisy helped me, cut me a break, huh,” I said, shouldering my swing into hers gently. Our knees brushed against each other.

“It was more than the card,” she whispered, sniffling and swiping again.

“Hannah, I . . .”

“I love that you love music, Jesse. You’re good—no, better than good, and I know how you get when you practice but . . . I go to all your band stuff: the fall concert, the block party, the time you guys played at the pool. But how many of my volleyball games have you been to? How many times do I give you a pass for being late to something before I look like a complete door mat?”

“I get it, okay, stop.”

“Do you, really? Remember in the fall when we took a ride over to the city, I kept thinking, ‘Wow, this is it, we’re finally doing something,’ and we ended up at Sam Ash for two hours. I stared at guitars while you talked to that guy with the dreads about the death of guitar solo and how you wanted to bring it back and—”

“We went for bubble tea after that. Walked around Times Square.”

“It’s all about the band. I want something different.”

“But you’re dating Duncan. He’s in a band.”

“Duncan plays the drums, Jess, he’s not a drummer. There’s a difference.”

“And you’d rather be with someone like that?”

“I’d rather be with someone who wants to spend time with me.”

“Hannah, I do.”

She sighed, twisting up the swing again.

“You just think you do, because you can’t.” She let go and spun around.

I grabbed the chain of the swing and stopped her, pulled her close to me. Our foreheads touched. I tried to look her in the eyes but it was a distorted, too-close cyclops eye. She didn’t pull away; she leaned into me. A sign. I moved my face toward hers, her mouth a few sweet seconds away.

“Hannah,” I whispered.

She turned her head, my lips stranded there in midair.

“Please, don’t.”

I leaned away, staring at my feet again.

“So is this what we needed to talk about?”

“No, Jesse, I wanted to ask you for a favor.”

This was getting better and better. I gripped the chains on the swing and pulled myself back to standing. It was fucking freezing out, but suddenly my pits were damp. I put my hood up and turned to her. Waiting.

“Please, give Duncan the song. He’s really put—”

“WHAT?” I yelled, arms outstretched. A lady pushing a jogger stroller along the sidewalk in front of the park startled and eyed us through the chain-link face. I shoved my hands into my pockets. “This is what you meant by ‘We need to talk.’”

“No. Yes. Not exactly. . . . Look, what I just said about Duncan playing the drums . . . this Battle of the Bands thing, it’s important to him. . . . Just, reconsider. You could probably write another song in your sleep.”

“Did he ask you to do this?”

“No.”

Somehow that made me feel worse.

“I have to go do a few things before work. I’ll catch you around,” I said, walking away.

“Jesse, the song? Please.”

I turned toward her. She hopped off the swing.

“I just—I know this is a mess and I hurt you and I’m sorry,” she said, coming closer, “but I really hope we can be friends. That we all can be friends. He makes me happy.”

This was it. The end. In a crazy, backward movie reel, our relationship swirled through my head. I’d never be the one to make her laugh so hard, soda shot out of her nose. Or pry her hands from her eyes during The Blair Witch Project. We’d never go on the Zipper at the St. Mary’s carnival so many times in a row we’d want to hurl. Memories. Packed up tight in a little box, shoved away like the cards. Done.

“I want you to be happy, Hannah. I just don’t want to see it,” I said, backing away. I saw in her eyes this was a direct hit. They sharpened, lost just a bit of their light.

I resisted the urge to apologize, and left.