July 1987 A month had passed. He had started to stop flinching every time someone called his name.

Riley stayed.

He told himself it was because he had nowhere else to go. No signal. No money that would make sense here. No way to explain himself to anyone.

But the truth was simpler than that.

He wasn't ready to stop seeing her.

Miguel, it turned out, was terrible at talking to girls.

Riley discovered this on the second day, when Miguel spent forty-five minutes combing his hair before walking to the convenience store where Melissa's friend worked, buying a single candy, and walking home without saying anything to anyone.

"How did it go?" Riley asked when he came back.

"Nothing. I just bought candy."

Riley stared at him. "That's it?"

"She wasn't there."

"Her friend was there."

"...Yes."

"You could have asked her friend about her."

Miguel sat down heavily on the bench outside. "I know."

Riley looked at this man — his father, young and helpless and completely undone by a girl in a yellow dress — and felt something strange move through him. Not pity. Something closer to tenderness.

He had never seen his father like this.

By the time Riley was old enough to understand what love was, his parents were already past this part. They were the version that argued about electricity bills and ate dinner in comfortable silence and held each other's hands at the hospital without needing to say anything.

He never got to see the beginning.

"What's her name?" Riley asked, even though he already knew.

Miguel was quiet for a long time.

"Melissa," he finally said. Like it was something he'd been keeping in his mouth carefully, afraid to say too loud.

Riley looked away.

Yeah, he thought. That's her.

On the fourth day, Miguel finally talked to her.

Riley wasn't there when it happened. He was helping Miguel's mother carry vegetables from the market when Miguel came running back, slightly out of breath, trying very hard to look calm.

"I talked to her," he said.

Riley raised an eyebrow. "And?"

Miguel pressed his lips together to hide a smile and failed completely.

"She said yes."

Riley was not supposed to follow them.

He knew that. He told himself that very clearly as he walked three houses behind them on the evening of their first date, keeping to the shadows of the street like someone who was definitely not doing what he was doing.

They went to a small food stall at the end of the road. The kind with plastic stools and a chalkboard menu and a single fluorescent bulb that made everything look a little bit warmer than it actually was.

Miguel pulled out Melissa's stool for her.

She laughed a little. "How fancy."

"I practiced," Miguel said seriously.

She laughed harder.

Riley stood at the corner of the street, far enough that they couldn't see him, close enough that he could hear pieces of their conversation when the jeepney wasn't passing.

He watched his father lean forward when Melissa talked. Watched his mother tuck her hair behind her ear three times in ten minutes. Watched them share a plate of food without planning to — it just happened, naturally, the way things do when two people are already comfortable with each other without realizing it yet.

At one point Melissa said something Riley couldn't hear.

And Miguel laughed.

Really laughed — not politely, not softly — the way Riley had heard maybe twice in his entire life. Head tilting back. Shoulders shaking. Completely unguarded.

Riley gripped the corner of the wall.

There it is, he thought. That's where I got it from.

He had his father's laugh. He had always known that. People told him at the funeral — You are really your son, same laugh — and he had nodded and smiled and not known what to do with that information.

But now he was watching it. The original. The source.

And it looked like joy. Pure and uncomplicated and belonging to a man who did not yet know what was coming. Who did not yet know that this girl across the plastic table would become his wife, his home, his grief.

Who did not yet know that one day he would sit very still at a dinner table and say almost nothing, because the person who made him laugh like that was gone.

Riley looked down at the ground.

He stayed until they finished eating.

He watched Miguel walk Melissa home. Watched them stop at her gate. Watched the small awkward pause that every first date ends with — neither of them wanting to be the one who says goodnight first.

Then Melissa said something.

And Miguel smiled the way Riley had never seen him smile.

And she went inside.

And Miguel stood at the gate for a moment longer than necessary, looking at the closed door like it was something worth looking at.

Riley watched his father walk home alone, hands in his pockets, face tilted slightly upward.

Then he looked up at the same sky.

The stars here were brighter. No light pollution. No tall buildings blocking the horizon.

She's going to love him, Riley thought. And it's going to be the best thing that ever happens to both of them.

He swallowed hard.

And then it's going to hurt so much.

He stood there for a long time.

Just breathing.