“Hey. Just getting here?” I asked.

“Huh? Oh, yeah,” he muttered.

“Alec, can we talk please?”

“What about?”

“I . . . I miss you,” I whispered as my voice shook.

His face-hardened and he stepped to the side. “You can’t say things like that, Samone.”

I know he saw the hurt in my eyes, because for a split second, his showed regret.

“But you said you wanted us to be friends.”

“I did, but . . . I don’t think we can,” he warned.

“Please Alec, we can be friends. You haven’t even tried! Most of the time you won’t even look at me.”

“I guess I was wrong. I was stupid to think we could go from being what we were . . . to being just friends. It’s too . . . confusing.”

“That’s because we love each other. We belong together. I don’t know about you, but I can’t just turn my feelings off like a damn light switch,” I pleaded.

“I’m sorry, Samone, but . . . I don’t love you anymore.”

He said the words, but his face revealed the lie I knew it to be. I couldn’t stop the hope that flooded my heart.

“You’re lying. I know it. You know it,” I hissed. “I don’t know why you’re doing this to us, but I hope you figure out whatever the hell it is, fast.”

He didn’t say another word, just roughed his hand through his hair, turned around, and walked away.

It was a Saturday night, two long months since Alec had broken up with me. Okay, I’ll admit it. I sent him more than a few text messages, pleading with him to give us another chance. He never replied to any of them, not even the picture I sent of us from one of our hiking trips at Sweetwater Creek State Park.

Graduation came and went, I’d hoped, with the celebration of academic achievement and promise of a new life, that things would change, but they didn’t, and he remained as aloof as ever.

My eighteenth birthday passed. It was supposed to be one of those landmark birthdays, filled with fun and celebration. I went through the typical eighteenth birthday motions, but my heart just wasn’t in it. That night, I sat on the couch, staring at the season passes Alec had bought us for Six Flags Over Georgia. He hadn’t been able to wait for my birthday to give them to me. I cried just looking at them, unable to even find even a sliver of solace in a bowl of mint chocolate chip ice cream.

One summer evening, when Heather and I were getting ready for a party at her boyfriend, Peter’s house, she said it was time for me to suck it up and show Alec just what he’d thrown away. I knew it was dumb, but I couldn’t give up on hope. Maybe, when he saw I was there too, things would just fall back into place. I hoped if he saw me looking my best and happy without him, even if it wasn’t genuine, he might want to get back what he gave up . . . what he threw away, you know, the whole “stars aligned-happily ever after” kind of bullshit magic people talk about. But that wasn’t realistic.

I hated that word—realistic. It rolled off my tongue like an expletive.

Heather was right. I decided to show him what he’d given up, hoping he would remember the feeling of our love. I always thought it was strong and real. It’d always felt that way. I couldn’t reconcile our last months together, even the way he had become distant, with his actions at the end. No matter how much time passed, I couldn’t understand or accept he ended us the way he did, that it was over with no hope of us getting back together. I, at least, needed some damn answers.

As we pulled up to Peter’s house, I couldn’t stop the swell of anticipation and hope at seeing him again. I knew he’d be there. His best friend, Heather’s cousin, Marchello, said he would be. He also said, every time one of my text messages came through, Alec’s face would go sad before he could stop it, and he’d turn his phone off. But he wasn’t seeing anyone. At all. So that had to be a good sign. Right?

I didn’t see him when I entered the house. I scanned the living room, but he wasn’t there, just countless couples making out on every couch, chair and even the floor in the corner.

Good God, get a room already.

Shaking my head, I turned and grabbed Heather’s hand to go get our drinks from Peter’s makeshift bar in the kitchen. That’s when I saw him.

No wonder I hadn’t seen him right away. Some slutty, blonde skank was straddling his lap, grinding her herself into him. He was kissing her neck, and his hands were grabbing her ass, rocking along with the movement of her hips.

I stood frozen in place, my heart slowly breaking again. How could he do this? I didn’t think I could ever feel any worse than I did at that moment. But then, Alec’s beautiful crystal blue eyes met mine. They looked cold, different, off somehow. Not like my Alec. But then again, he wasn’t my Alec anymore.

Nobody else could have recognized the regret in his knitted brow, but I did. At least I thought I did, until he turned his head back to the slut’s neck. He pulled her closer, and if they weren’t clothed, they could have been having sex right then and there.

So much for “making love” being something you do only with someone who means the world to you, someone you love with your whole heart.

It was special for us the first time we’d made love, or at least I thought it had been. Every time we were together, it had felt special, like we were the only people who existed on the planet. But Alec wasn’t making love with this slut. And I knew she wasn’t anything special. I’d seen that tramp stamp rocking on guys’ laps at parties enough to know that she was always hooking up with whomever would have her. I’d just never imagined my Alec would be one of them.

Flashes of our first time flooded my mind. He’d made it so special. Yeah, it hurt at first, but he was gentle and made me feel like I was his whole world. Watching him with her, I couldn’t believe we were each other’s first. From what he was doing with her now, I wondered if he’d really been a virgin our first time. He’d never done that with me before.

He slowly stood up as she wrapped her legs around him. When he walked past me, we locked eyes, for the first time ever, a chill ran through me as I looked into the cold depths of crystal blue. He looked like he was pissed at me for being there. He kept walking down the hall as the slut gyrated her overused asset against his waistline. I couldn’t peel my eyes away from the scene before me. He set her down and pushed her up against the wall, grinding himself against her while she nuzzled his ear.

With one last angry look at me, he reached around her and opened the guest bedroom door. She grabbed his hand and yanked him in the room, slamming the door behind them, finally breaking his eye contact with me.

I couldn’t stop my feet from moving. It was like some force was pulling me toward that bedroom. Finally standing in front of the door, my feet felt glued to the spot where her shrill laughter and slutty moans seeped from the room. Creaks and headboard thumping echoed in a steady rhythm of sex from the room, making my stomach churn.

I couldn’t move. I couldn’t tear my eyes from that damn bedroom doorknob.

I slid down the wall with my mind focused on the door that stood between me and my whole heart. I didn’t think it was possible to hurt any more, but at that moment, my heart was well and truly shredded.

The next thing I remembered was waking up in my bed. I took a shower, got dressed, made a sesame bagel, and drank a hot cup of tea. Resolved to not wallow in my pain, or let it define me, I stomped off to my bedroom, threw my suitcase on my bed, and began shoving clothes and shoes into it. That was it. I had to get the hell out of there. After I finished packing, I left a note for my parents and one for Heather. I couldn’t deal with talking to them face to face yet. I got in my car and headed to Auburn. Alison and Tamron would be able to get my mind off of Alec. And right then, there was nothing I needed more. When I arrived, though, I just sat in my car and stared at the locked door to their old style apartment building.