I awake in the morning expecting to feel guilty. But I don’t. I haven’t done anything wrong.

Martha has friends over to work on tile pieces. She asks me if I want to make one, but I decline. Not a crafty person. Then she sets me to work sorting the colored pieces into boxes, and I sit at the kitchen table, the fan overhead blowing wisps of hair around my face, and sort each glass square into the appropriate place.

“Good morning.”

Tiago comes out of the bathroom freshly showered, toweling off his shoulder-length hair. I look up at him, and I’m glad it’s long, because it keeps me from falling back into memories. This Tiago looks older, acts older, than the boy I knew.

“Morning, friend,” I say. Never mind that we had a heavy make-out session yesterday that was more than friendly. I pat the seat beside me. “Want to help sort tiles?”

He comes over, but then his mom calls him to her table with her group of friends. The ladies tease him and poke at him and he takes it with a smile. Then his mom says something and he nods. He returns to me.

“My mom needs more tile glue,” he says, leaning over the table where I sort. “I have to go to the store and get some. Want to come?”

Better than doing this. “How far is it?” I ask.

“Pretty far. Maybe a thirty-minute walk. We can take the bus, but it will take twenty minutes.”

“Walking is fine. I like walking.”

I get my purse, and we head outside.

“I hate walking,” he says. “It takes forever to get anywhere.”

“You could drive, then.”

“We only have one car. Even if I had my license, I couldn’t.”

“Oh.” I hadn’t thought of that. “We could take a taxi.”

“Yeah. Maybe if it were night. But daytime, this is easier. I still hate it.”

“What physical activities do you like?”

“Soccer, jujitsu—” he steals a glance at me. “Sex.”

I’m so startled I stumble. He catches my arm, but I pull free and turn on him with rounded eyes. I don’t mean to be surprised and it’s absolutely none of my business, but I got the impression from all our conversations that he hadn’t gotten serious with any girls since me. “Have you—”

He starts laughing. He shakes his head. “I couldn’t help it, I wanted to see your face. For a second, you thought—”

I slap his forearm. “Tiago, you jerk! That was mean. So you haven’t . . .”

He shakes his head. “I haven’t had sex. Not since you.”

His voice goes soft on the last words, but it’s impossible not to be affected by the memories. I study his profile, and I see him as the handsome man he’s becoming. “It would be okay if you had, you know.”

“Oh, I wanted to. But I just—couldn’t.” He casts me a sideways look. “And you? If you feel like telling, I mean.”

I’m not ashamed of my actions since he and I broke up, but in the face of him admitting he hasn’t been with anyone else, I hate admitting I have. I almost don’t want him to know.

“I don’t feel like telling,” I say.

Which feels unfair.

But he gave me an out.

“What about—I mean, have you had any serious boyfriends?” he asks.

Maybe it wasn’t an out. Maybe he intends to find out in a roundabout way. “Yes, a few.”

“How serious was your last one?”

I chuckle at how cleverly he asks about Owen. “Really serious. We talked about marriage. But it turns out talk is talk, because now we’re broken up and definitely not married.”

“Do you miss him?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think you’ll get back together?”

“I do not,” I say, very quietly. “But I still want to.”

He surprises me by putting an arm around my shoulders and hugging me into his side. “I’m sorry. I know that pain. It sounds like you’re not ready to move on.”

“I’m not, and I appreciate you understanding that.” I exhale. “You went through that with a girl, huh?”

“Yeah. It was my fault, though. I loved her and didn’t want to, and I thought it would go away if I ignored her.”

He doesn’t look at me, but I know he’s talking about me.

“It didn’t,” he continues. “So then I realized how stupid I was being and tried to get back together with her, but it turned out—she didn’t want me anymore.”

“Have you been able to move on?”

“No.”

“Do you think you’ll get back together?” I parrot his question back at him, and I’m curious how he’ll respond.

“I honestly don’t know,” he says. “But I still want to.”

I take his hand. “Thanks for being honest with me.”

“What do you think is the number one thing that ruins a relationship?”

“Dishonesty,” I say, without hesitation. “It ruins everything.”

“Yeah. I think you’re right.”

He doesn’t release my hand as we walk to the shop.

It’s nice to be touched in a nonsexual way. We could be friends, we could be siblings, we could be lovers. No one knows from looking. I know we don’t know.

Martha’s friends have all gone but one by the time we get back from the store. The two of them are huddled together over a tile, arranging colors on top of it. Martha glances at us when we come in and then barks an order at Tiago.

He sets the bag of glue down and says to me, “She wants us to find the box of small green colors out of her shed.”

“Her shed?” I didn’t know there was a shed. I follow him around the side of the house, and sure enough, there’s a small building in the back. “Wow. I never came back here.”

“Yep. She keeps her craft things here.”

It’s cramped inside, not much bigger than my bathroom. I bump into a chair and hit my hip on a table when I spin away from it. Tiago goes to a pile of boxes against one wall and starts opening them. He points to another pile near me.

“Can you check those? Looking for little green squares.”

“Ow.” I scrape my elbow along the bumpy interior wall. Then I squat and begin going through boxes. “Wires. Magnets. Purple squares.” I move boxes out of the way to get to more in the back. “More magnets.”

“You don’t have to tell me,” he says.

I roll my eyes, but of course he can’t see me. Just for that, I begin calling out what I find in a loud voice. “Glass bottles. Colored tape. Chicken wire?” I stand up, forgetting I moved inward and there’s a beam, until I smack it with my head. The box tumbles from my hands.

“Ow!” I almost swear, but I bite it back.

“Lucia!” Tiago scurries around the table and comes to my side, moving my hand away from my head to check it. “Are you—” He looks down at the spilled box at my feet. “You made a mess.”

“It’s your fault!” I say. “You told me to check this side.”

He starts laughing. “Somehow I didn’t know you are so accident prone.”

“I’m not! It was just—” I whack his shoulder because he’s still laughing. “This feels unfair.”

I go to whack him again and he grabs my wrist, preventing me. I lose my balance, tripping over the box and chicken wire and taking him with me. Several other boxes crash around us, and he grabs me by the waist before I topple into them.

He can’t stop laughing. He pulls me into a hug and then rears back as if startled he got this close to me, his face inches from mine.

He could kiss me. I catch my breath in expectation, heady from the feel of his arm around me.

But he doesn’t. Instead, he starts to release me. I feel his arm go slack, and I tug him closer, wrapping my arms around his torso and holding him in place.

His heart races beneath his shirt. Is mine going that fast? I turn my face up and push up on my toes to meet his mouth.