The champagne flute trembles in my hand as I stand outside the restaurant window, watching Marcus laugh at something she says. His fiancée. The woman who gets to touch his arm like that, who makes him smile the way he used to smile at me. I shouldn't be here. I know I shouldn't be here. But when your childhood best friend—your first love, your everything—gets engaged to someone else, apparently self-destruction becomes incredibly appealing. "Elena, this is pathetic," I whisper to myself, my breath fogging the cold glass. "Go home." I don't move. Marcus looks good. Better than good, actually. He's filled out since college, his shoulders broader in that navy suit jacket. His dark hair is styled differently now, more mature, though I can still see the boy who used to climb through my bedroom window at midnight just to talk about nothing and everything. That was before I ruined it all. That was before I became the worst person in his life. My phone buzzes. It's my roommate, Jenna: "Please tell me you're not stalking him again." I type back quickly: "I'm not stalking. I'm just... observing from a public sidewalk." "That's literally the definition of stalking. Come home. Ben & Jerry's and bad reality TV await." I should listen to her. I should walk away, go back to my tiny apartment, and continue the process of moving on that I've been spectacularly failing at for the past two years. Instead, I watch as the woman—Vanessa, her name is Vanessa—leans across the table and kisses him. It's soft, appropriate for a public restaurant, but it still feels like a knife between my ribs. That should be me. Would be me, if I hadn't been so monumentally stupid. The memory hits me like it always does, unwanted and vivid. That night five years ago, the night that destroyed everything. Marcus and I had been dating for three years by then, since our sophomore year of college. We'd known each other since we were seven years old, when his family moved in next door. He was my first everything—first crush, first kiss, first love, first time. We were supposed to be forever. "Elena?" I spin around so fast I nearly drop my champagne flute. Because of course—of course—the universe hates me enough to make this moment even worse. Marcus stands three feet away, hands in his pockets, his expression unreadable. Up close, I can see the tiny scar above his left eyebrow from when we were twelve and tried to build a treehouse without adult supervision. I can see the gold flecks in his brown eyes that I used to trace with my fingertips. "Marcus." My voice comes out strangled. "Hi. I was just—" "Stalking me?" His tone is flat, emotionless. Somehow that's worse than if he'd been angry. "No! No, I was just... I was meeting a friend at the bar next door, and I saw you through the window, and I—" The lie dies on my lips. I've never been able to lie to Marcus. "Okay, yes. I was stalking you. I'm sorry. I'll go." I turn to leave, but his voice stops me. "Why?" It's one word, but it contains everything. Why am I here? Why did I do what I did? Why can't I let him go? I turn back slowly. "I heard about your engagement. Congratulations." "That's not what I asked." Behind him, through the restaurant window, I can see Vanessa looking around, probably wondering where he went. She's beautiful in that effortless way some women are—blonde, tall, elegant. Everything I'm not with my messy dark hair and average height and the coffee stain on my coat that I didn't notice until just now. "I don't know why I'm here," I admit, because what's the point of lying now? "I guess I wanted to see if you looked happy." "And?" "You do." The words taste like ash. "You look really happy." Something flickers across his face, too quick for me to identify. "I am happy, Elena. Vanessa is amazing. She's kind, and successful, and she would never—" He stops himself, jaw tightening. She would never do what I did. That's what he was going to say. "I know," I whisper. "I know she wouldn't." The silence stretches between us, heavy with five years of hurt and regret and all the words we never got to say. Or maybe we said too many words that night. Maybe that was the problem. "I should get back inside," Marcus says finally. "She's probably wondering where I went." "Of course. I'm sorry for interrupting your dinner." He nods, starts to walk away, then pauses. When he looks back at me, I see something in his eyes that makes my heart stutter with dangerous, stupid hope. "For what it's worth," he says quietly, "I don't hate you, Elena. I did, for a long time. But I don't anymore." He disappears back into the restaurant before I can respond, leaving me standing on the sidewalk with tears streaming down my face and champagne I stole from a wedding reception I crashed earlier burning in my stomach. I don't hate you. It should feel like closure. It should feel like forgiveness. Instead, it feels like the saddest thing anyone has ever said to me. Because indifference is so much worse than hate. Hate means he still feels something. Indifference means I've become nothing to him, just a painful memory he's finally moved past. I pull out my phone and call Jenna. She answers on the first ring. "I need you to hide my laptop," I tell her. "And my phone after this call. And possibly tie me to the bed so I can't leave the apartment." "That bad?" "I talked to him." "Oh, honey." Her voice fills with sympathy. "Come home. I'll make the sad playlist and get the ice cream." "Make it the really sad playlist," I say, finally forcing myself to walk away from the restaurant. "The one with the Adele songs." "That serious?" I look back one more time. Through the window, Marcus is sliding back into his seat across from Vanessa. She reaches for his hand, and he lets her take it. He's smiling again, but this time I can see something underneath it. Something that looks almost like... No. I'm imagining things because I want to imagine things. "Yeah," I tell Jenna, turning away for good this time. "That serious." What I don't tell her is that for just a moment, when Marcus looked at me on that sidewalk, I saw the boy who used to love me. The boy who used to look at me like I was his whole world. And I wonder—not for the first time, and probably not for the last—if some part of him still does.