When You Were Here

year at UCSD. It all started after I gave her that star ring. I was crazy nervous to give it to her because even though I knew something had been brewing between us, with every innuendo and flirtation, I didn’t entirely want to let myself believe it. I fooled myself into thinking I was just giving her this silly ring, a cheap little decoder ring, like the kind of thing you’d find in a gum-ball machine. I went over to her house, and both her parents were out, and it was the middle of the day, so Holland was doing what any self-respecting California girl who’d just graduated from high school would be doing. Hanging out with all of her friends by the pool. Caitlin and Anaka, Elle and Lila. I was outnumbered, and clearly there were too many bikinis and too much flesh for me to be able to see straight, or be able to give a girl a gift and not feel supremely stupid.
    But Holland didn’t care that her friends were over. Her face lit up when she answered the door. “Come join us, Danny,” she said, and waved toward the pool.
    “I have to be someplace,” I said, and thrust the box with the ring at her.
    “Come on. Stay. Please stay.”
    “I have to go.”
    Later that night, she found me on the beach as I walked Sandy Koufax on the edge of the waves. She marched up to me and held up her hand. The ring was on her right index finger. “I love this ring, Danny. I love this ring so much.”
    My heart ricocheted around my chest. “You do?”
    “I do.”
    A step closer. It was like a slow dance, and you know what’s coming next, you know you’re coming together, and it’s all a delirious build.
    “Do you remember that time you helped me with calculus earlier this year?” she began.
    “Yes.”
    “And how you didn’t make fun of me for not getting integers or derivatives or whatever it was?”
    “Why would I have made fun of you for that?”
    “Because you’re smarter than me.”
    “That’s not true,” I said. I was just good at school.
    “But the point is, I wasn’t embarrassed to ask you and I knew you’d help and you did help. Or how about all the times you drove me to school and you always came to the door to get me? You never honked.”
    “My dad always told me to never honk when you pull up to someone’s house. Turn off the car and walk to the door to get them.”
    “Or how about the time my mom and dad were out of town and I found a possum in the house?”
    “He was pretty creepy.” I laughed, remembering the possum under the couch.
    “And the first thing I did was call you. And you came over right away.”
    “Well, you did shriek a bit on the phone. But yeah, you had a possum under the couch. Of course I would come over,” I said, and I felt like every breath was magic in the night air, because I knew every breath would bring me closer to her. “But it wasn’t me who saved you from the possum.” I tipped my forehead toward my dog. I had brought Sandy Koufax over, and she ferried that possum right out of the house and into the backyard. Holland slammed the doors shut, then insisted on cooking a steak for my dog, who stood at the sliding-glass doors looking out all night and watching for the possum she’d almost had for dinner.
    “The point of all this is—you’re awesome. So it’s about time we just admitted it.”
    I inched closer to her. This was happening. This was real. “Admitted what?” I asked, teasing her.
    “This.” Then her arms were around my neck, and my lips were on hers, soft and warm and better than in all the times I’d imagined kissing her. Her perfect body was pressed against mine, and my mind was soaring, and my whole body was humming.
    At the end of the summer Holland went off to college, but we had plans. We were going to see each other twice a month. I’d drive down there, or she’d drive up here every other weekend. But the first time I was supposed to visit,my mom needed a blood transfusion, and even though Kate kept saying she’d take care of her that weekend, I wasn’t going to leave my mom alone. I canceled, and we made plans for two weeks later. But then Holland called and told me she had a massive project due in her women’s studies elective that Monday morning and if I came down she wouldn’t touch the thing, she’d only touch me, and so she had to resist me, a sentiment that was ridiculously endearing at the time.
    The next time we talked, she was a different person entirely. It was as if a machine inhabited her and moved her mouth with