“To my class?” He blinks in surprise.

“Yes. Should I get my book?”

He gets over his shock and nods. “Yes.”

I grab my book and he yells bye to his mom, then we head out the door.

Neither of us speaks for a long moment as we walk down the street. I follow him because I don’t know where we’re going. The sun is setting, lending a pink hue to the cracked sidewalk and piles of trash along the street.

“I’m sorry for earlier,” he says finally. He sounds tired, defeated. “I didn’t mean to. I’m not sure how it happened. I’ve dreamed of kissing you for so long, and now you’re here and I—I couldn’t stop it.”

I take my time pondering a response. “I wish you didn’t love me.”

“Me too.”

I snort at his admission. “I’ve done nothing but hurt you for the past two years.”

“Yes. But it’s my fault.”

We walk in more silence, accompanied by honking horns and screeching tires as we get closer to the city center. 

“I don’t know what I feel for you,” I say finally.

He glances at me as we stop at a cross walk. “You said you feel nothing for me.”

“I thought I didn’t. But kissing you—confused me.”

The light turns green to walk, but he’s holding my gaze solemnly and doesn’t see it. “In what way?”

I shrug, and suddenly I feel close to tears. “I feel more than I thought I did.” I blink, and the tears slip free.

Tiago grabs me and hugs me. “Then I’m not sorry. I’m glad I kissed you.” He releases me. “I think we need to talk.”

I nod. 

His eyes are steady on me. “I can skip my class.”

“No. Go to class.”

“How will I be able to concentrate now?”

“It’s fine. I’m still figuring out what to say, anyway.”

He finally notices the light and takes my hand to cross the busy intersection. He releases me at the other side, but I flex my fingers.

Everything about him is familiar.

I sit in a chair in the hall while he does class, and I borrow paper from someone so I can try to organize my thoughts. But they are a jumbled mess that keep going to one big question mark: what do I feel for Tiago? Followed by: are my feelings for other people relevant? Or is Tiago all that matters right now?

His class is four hours long. He should have warned me. I finish my book and wander the halls, and I think I’ve settled on an understanding by the time he’s done. 

He finally comes out, pulling his bag over one shoulder. “Are you hungry?”

“I’m starving,” I admit.

“Come on.”

He takes me to a quiet place on the beach with a few tables set up on the sand. He orders carne e fritas, a delicious dish of fries covered in cut steak, grilled onions, and au jus.

But now I can barely eat because I feel the weight of everything that needs to be said sitting on my shoulders. I take a few bites and settle back in my chair.

“I feel like, to understand all this, I need to go back to the beginning,” I say.

“Back to the beginning?”

“When this started between you and me.” I gesture between us. “I don’t feel like myself right now. I feel like I’ve gone back in time and stepped into the skin of that girl I used to be. And she’s fragile.” I rub my arms. “I feel fragile.”

“Tell me what you are thinking.”

“I—” This feels easier talking about my former self in the third person. “The girl I was, she loved you. She was crazy about you. You were her whole world. When you were apart, she felt broken. But that week in Brazil with you hurt her. She lost faith in love, she lost confidence in herself. She started to think you never really cared for her at all.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, but I wave him off. It’s my turn to talk.

“When she came back to the States, she waited for you. She checked the mailbox every day. She caught her breath every time the phone rang. Her heart belonged to you, and she would do anything to keep you. She was yours.”

I see the shame in his eyes. He flinches but holds my gaze.

“You—” I’m there in those moments, a senior in high school and devastated at the loss of the boy who I thought loved me. I search for the right word to describe what he did to me. “You crushed her. Every day with no word from you killed her a little bit more. You could have saved her heart with just a word here or there, a note, a phone call. She was devoted to you. And you took that devotion, that loyalty, that love, and crumbled it up and spat on it before throwing it away. That girl adored you. And you let that love rot in a gutter.” I’m not remembering the pain. I’m in it. My lips tremble, my teeth chatter, and I wrap my arms around myself. 

“I’m so sorry.” He gets up like he would hold me, embrace me, but I shake my head.

“She found you untrustworthy. You nearly broke her belief in love. But she got over you, Tiago. She never got you out of her heart, but she found a safe place for you. In the ‘friendship box.’” I make air quotes around it so he knows I’m referencing what he said earlier. I lean closer to him and say, “Do not ask me to undo all her hard work and let you out of that box.”

Tiago settles back in his chair and scrubs a hand over his face. “There has been so much hurt between us.”

“Yes.” I nod. “We can’t seem to help hurting each other. We need to respect each other and not get romantically involved.”

He drops his hand and reaches across the table. His fingers find mine, and he squeezes.

“I’m not that same person. I’m ashamed I did that to you. I regret so much. Don’t you think it keeps me up at night, the knowledge of what I did? And that if I hadn’t—maybe we would be together now, maybe you never would have loved anyone else?”

My mind hasn’t gotten that far. I’m still stuck in first semester of my senior year, still wracked in the pain he gave me. But now I follow his thoughts and realize what I would have lost if he hadn’t done that to me.

Being free to date. Owen.

My mind seizes on Owen, because he’s still the light of my life. Maybe he always will be, even if we’re never together again. 

Suddenly I’m looking at everything differently. If Tiago hadn’t abandoned me, I never would have loved Owen.

I owe Tiago a huge debt of gratitude.

“You’re not that same person,” I say. “You’re not him. And I’m not her.” I laugh suddenly. I feel the weights and shackles of the past falling away. “We are not them, Tiago.”

He watches me, trying to read me, but even I haven’t settled on what I’m feeling. 

“So who are we?” he asks.

“New people. We carry the memories of those people, but we aren’t them.”

It’s liberating, to see Tiago this way.