long do you think it’s been since we’ve been in here?”
“Years,” he deadpans. “It feels like a lifetime ago.”
I run my finger along the window sill, where we carved in our names like we used to do everywhere. Holden + Mia.
“You know, last year, when you left…” Holden says, and I look over at him. “I’d go by the house, just to check in on your grandpa. It was every couple of days in the beginning, and then it became daily, and I got to know him.”
“My grandpa?” I ask incredulously.
“No, you dumbass. Leo!”
“Oh.”
“He didn’t talk a lot at first. I’d be doing all the talking, but I realized that he didn’t really have a lot to say. He listened. A lot. And when he did talk, he opened up, and when he opened up, you had no choice but to hear him.”
A heaviness forms in my chest, and I go back to tracing the letters of our names.
“He told me everything, Mia. About all the summers you spent together, about waking up and sneaking off on your bikes to go to the water tower. The music you’d play, the conversations you’d have…”
I fill my lungs with their life source.
“But he also told me about…”
Tears fill my eyes instantly, and I wish, pray… God, please no.
“He told me about that last night you were there… on their lake, about how—”
“Stop,” I whisper.
“He cried, Mia… when he was telling me. And guys like us, we don’t fucking cry. Especially to each other. It devastated him, and I—”
I turn to him, not hiding my emotions. “Then how do you think I feel?” I whisper-yell. “That was the most humiliating, most mortifying experience of my life!”
“Is that why you won’t give him a chance, because—”
“No,” I huff out. “That’s not why!”
Holden stares at me, his eyes shifting from side to side, trying to read me, trying to do the impossible. I’ve built so many walls, layers upon layers of bricks so high no one can get to me. No one can see me.
“Then why do you—” he shouts, then groans in frustration, the heel of his palm rubbing at his temple. “It’s not fair to him, you inviting your boyfriend—”
“I didn’t invite him.”
“—and rubbing it in his face like that!”
“Whose side are you on?” I demand.
Holden drops his head between his shoulders. “I didn’t know there were sides, Mia. But Leo cares about you. I’m pretty sure he’s insanely in love with you, and I care about you, too, and I want what’s best for you.”
“And you think Leo’s it?” I almost sneer.
He looks up at me now. “Yeah, Mia. I do.”
Silence passes between us, and I can see it now, a lifetime of friendship thrown away over something he’ll never understand. “You don’t know anything,” I whisper, my throat too tight to speak any louder. He stays quiet while a million thoughts fly through my mind, and I search and search for a way out of this conversation, out of this emotional hell. And the only thing I can come up with is: “I love him, too, you know... it’s not one-sided.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
A sob erupts from my chest, and Holden moves closer, his arm going around my shoulders. Perfect, sympathetic Holden and his broken little toy. I wipe away the tears with the back of my hand, staring down at my lap, because looking at him—knowing that someone else is there to hear my deepest, darkest thoughts, my secrets, my turmoil—it’s too much. “Every time Leo kisses me, or he touches me, or even looks at me…” I pause, try to gather my thoughts. “I think about how easy it would be to give in to him. To us. And I close my eyes, and for a second, I picture my life with him—this perfect life that would last forever. Marriage. Kids. All of it.” I take a breath, and then another. “But it only lasts a second. Because the next thing I see is me as the pathetic, insecure, fourteen-year-old girl, shivering in the cold water of that lake hearing all the horrible things his brothers are saying about me, realizing how they feel—”
“Mia…” he sighs out, and he holds the back of my head to his chest, taking in my pain and my heartbreak like he’s always done.
“And I can forgive him for that. I have forgiven him.” I rear back and look up at him. “But I can never step foot on that property again. I can