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before,” I said, chuckling and tugging gently at the strands of her hair until they unwound from the chain. My hand lingered, raking through the bottom of her hair for a moment past friendly. She gathered her hair in a ponytail, pulling it away from me and then letting it drop again. I shoved my hand into my pocket. Her cheeks and nose were pink from the cold.
    Did she have to look so damn adorable?
    I sat in the swing next to her, facing the opposite direction, and I straightened my legs and pushed back, gripping the chains, but standing still.
    â€œI miss you too, Jess. It doesn’t have to be this way, you can say hello to me now and then, it wouldn’t kill you.”
    â€œAh, but it would,” I said, swinging. Big mistake. My head whirled. I dug my feet back into the worn rubber mat under the swing and stopped.
    â€œJesse.”
    â€œWhy him?” I asked.
    The question stunned her. She looked down, rocking gently.
    â€œI don’t know, it just . . . happened.”
    â€œThings don’t just happen, Hannah.”
    â€œYou’re not being fair, Jesse.”
    â€œFair? Why am I the one who needs to be fair?”
    â€œDo you want to talk or do you want to fight?” she asked.
    I thought of all the times we’d sat, just like this, before we were officially together. Hannah was a friend, a crush, and then the best of both. At the yearly block party on our street, our parents always joked about how we were destined for each other. Her mother had even said once, “They’d make beautiful babies together,” long before either of us even understood what that meant. When we were younger, it was a source of embarrassment. In recent years, not so much. Jesse and Hannah forever. I’d never really thought about it, the “Jesse and Hannah forever” thing, but I never thought of our ending, either. I swung again, this time slowly.
    â€œDid I really treat you that bad?” I asked. Duncan’s words had stalked me since our conversation.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œDuncan said—”
    â€œYou pissed him off the other night, Jess.”
    â€œIs it true?”
    She sniffled, reached into her jacket pocket, and pulled out a crumpled tissue. She always needed tissues when theweather got below seventy degrees. If you looked in any of her pockets there’d be one, rumpled and close to disintegrating. Feeling mushy over snot rags. I’d reached a new low.
    â€œThe timing of it all sucked, you know?”
    â€œBecause I was sick?”
    She looked at me and pressed her lips together like she wanted to say more but didn’t know how. Oh, fuck . This had happened before I got sick over Thanksgiving break. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. But I did, of course, want to know, being a masochist and all.
    â€œIt happened before then.”
    â€œWay before?”
    â€œYou’re okay with this?” she asked.
    â€œSure,” I lied. “If we’re going to do the friends bit, we have to be able to talk, right?”
    She looked at me skeptically.
    â€œMy birthday, Jess.”
    Her birthday. Of course. I’d been a total jackass because I knew how much she’d been looking forward to her party. I lost track of time was a lame excuse, even though it had been the truth. It was hard to explain, and probably even harder for anyone to understand what happened to me when I got lost in music. I’d been working on Slash’s solo from “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” and I was killing it, just wanted to play it one more time . Time had no meaning as my fingers moved across the frets, burning the memory of the song into my muscles.I’d only gone into my garage to fool around with it for a little while, but a little while had turned into three hours, and I was late, like late -late, to Hannah’s sweet sixteen.
    â€œAnd then the card.”
    I dropped my chin to my chest, staring down at my feet. “It was