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“I felt terrible about that,” Anna’s mom said, spooning gravy onto her turkey. “I’d just had that breast cancer diagnosis, and Anna wanted to stay with me.”

“It wasn’t your fault, Mom,” Anna said flatly, taking the green bean casserole from me without looking at me.

“But why not just do long distance?” Dad said.

“Yes, why?” I asked, genuinely wanting to hear her defend it.

She glanced at me. “You sure you want to know?”

“I definitely want to know,” I said.

“Well,” she said, spooning green beans onto her plate. “Three months after we broke up, I went to see you.”

I looked at her, confused. “You did?”

“Oh yeah,” she said, passing the dish down the table. “Flew two thousand miles. And when I got there, I found you kissing another girl. So I got back into my taxi and I went home. And I blocked you and I never spoke to you again.”

My heart stilled in my chest.

Dad looked between us. “But… you were broken up,” he said. “You can’t be mad if a man’s dating someone else when you’re broken up.”

“You can when he’s begging you to get back with him,” she said, picking up her fork.

I stared at her.

Mom sighed. “Oh, to be young. Teenagers do the dumbest things. I’m so glad you two came back around, though.”

The table kept chattering, moving on to other topics while Anna and I sat silently next to each other, having a full-on exchange without saying a word.

She came to Berkeley? I had no idea. She hadn’t talked to me in weeks—she came back for me?

Our whole lives had changed in a moment I didn’t even know existed. Because she didn’t tell me.

And now I was betrayed.

“Excuse me,” I said, getting up.

I didn’t know where I was going or if I was even coming back. I just couldn’t be at that table another moment.

To my surprise, Anna stood, dropped her napkin on the piano bench, and followed me out of the room. I turned to face her the second we were out of earshot.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were coming? Why didn’t you ever tell me what happened?” I demanded.

“Oh, so it’s my fault for catching you in a lie?”

“You didn’t catch me in a lie,” I said.

Her eyes flashed. “So you’re denying it? I saw what I saw. You were kissing some girl in front of your dorm.”

“Yeah.” I nodded. “I was.”

She stared at me like she didn’t expect me to admit it.

“You and I were broken up, Anna. We’d been broken up the whole semester. You’d refused to even talk to me for over a month. I was depressed and panicked and starting to realize that you weren’t going to change your mind and this was my life now so I should just accept it and try to get over you.” I shook my head. “Did I go on a date with some girl? Yeah. I did. And I fucking hated every second of it because she wasn’t you. I didn’t so much as look at someone else after that for years. Years. And now you’re telling me you came to campus? That the last decade of my life didn’t have to be the bottomless black fucking hole that I threw my heart into? We could have been together?”

I didn’t even know what to say.

She was breathing hard.