I can’t believe I kissed him.

And I did. I kissed him.

That was no stolen kiss - nothing hidden in the shadows behind Ms. Hempstead’s garage. That was two people coming together for what they needed - magnetic attraction, like it always was with the two of us.

That was stupid.

It was stupid for me to be alone with him, to go there at all, really. So why did I? What, because I was sad about Blaine doing what I’m fairly certain deep down I always knew he’d do? What he’d probably done before he finally admitted it? I mean, I was sad, but I wasn’t heartbroken.

I can’t be heartbroken.

There’ve been three real relationships now, since Silas. Three that fell apart, because there was never anything of substance there, nothing that shook me to my core. Nothing that gripped me, or scared me.

And I hate that that’s his legacy on me, all these years later.

Every breakup hurts of course, but none of them ever really hurt - not in that way where you don’t know if you’ll live. Not in the way that brings you to your knees and crushes you under the weight of it.

And how could they?

Because it’s not just that Silas went away and left me with a broken shattered heart, it’s that he left and stole it with him. You can’t get heartbroken after that, with no heart left to break.

I’m mulling it over on the bench in my parent’s backyard, under the red leaves of the Japanese maple tree. It occurs to me that I used to press my lips to Silas’s on this very bench late at night after sneaking out the backdoor. But then, there’s not a lot of places in this stupid town where I didn’t do that.

Stupid, dumb, young love.

“How’re you doing?”

I glance up to see Sierra ducking under the canopy of branches with a sympathetic look on her face.

“Ugh.”

I shake my head and look away. I’m not ready to go there yet with anyone - not ready to tell her where I went last night.

Or who I went there with.

“Wanna talk about it?”

I give her a wry, sideways smile. “Not really.”

“Can I bribe you?”

She brings her hand from behind her back, a plate with two white-bread, peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches cut on the diagonal on them.

I grin in spite of myself.

It’s exactly the type of lunch we used to munch on out here on this bench, and I know she knows that.

She smiles and plops down next to me, grabbing a sandwich and passing me the plate.

“Nosey,” I mutter, taking a bite of PB&J.

“I know.” She arches a brow. “So, where’d you go?”

“O’Donnell’s.”

“No, I know that part.”

I raise a brow and she rolls her eyes.

“You dipped into Rowan’s stash. He noticed.”

I laugh and pull a face. “His ‘stash’ is disgusting cheap shit. Tell him if he’s going to go through the trouble of a ‘stash’, he should at least make it the good stuff.”

She laughs and then looks at me pointedly. “And after that?”

I look away.

“Silas?”

I frown and take a mouthful of sandwich.

Sierra groans as she slumps back on the bench. “Oh c’mon, Ivy!”

“What?” I pout. “It’s complicated, okay?”

It’s complicated because we’re married. Because eight years later, he still holds everything I am in his hands and I don’t know how to get free of that.

I take a deep breath.

I don’t know if I want to get free of that.

My phone pings beside me and Sierra throws her hands up as she rolls her eyes. “Of course; saved by Twitter or whatever.”

I stick my tongue out at her as I glance at the text from my friend Meredith.

There’s a cold, sinking feeling in my stomach. My hands shake as I quickly open the app, swiping down until I land on his name.

Oh that FUCKER.

He’s been posting all morning, it appears - easily twenty new pictures on his account.

But they aren’t of surfboards, or fucking hiking boots, or whatever micro-distillery whiskey is paying him this week.

They’re of her.

I feel the fire exploding inside of me as my jaw drops. Twenty fucking pictures of the two of them - sitting on a bench in Boston Commons, a clichéd shot of two pairs of lips sipping a smoothie from two straws.

Her lips on his cheek, his lips.

Her face is half-obscured - shot only from the nose down on any picture she’s in, but it doesn’t matter. I don’t give a shit who she is. Truth be told, I don’t even give much of a shit that he’s found someone else, which is a weirdly cold feeling.

But it’s true.

I’m not mad - well, not that mad - that he stood me up at my own parents’ house. Or even that he left me for some other girl.

I’m mad that he’s humiliating me about it. I’m mad about having my fucking face rubbed in it.

“Oh that fucker!”

Sierra snatches the phone from my hands before I can stop her, her jaw dropping even more than mine, her eyes looking even more livid.

“Is he for real?!”

“Apparently,” I mutter.

Sierra stares at me. “Why aren’t you mad?”

I frown. “I am mad.”

“Not as mad as you should be.”

I shake my head, looking away. I don’t want to get into how Blaine and I have been rocky for months. How he ended up keeping his own apartment when he was going to move into mine a month ago. How he canceled the plans I’d made for his birthday at the last minute because “something came up.”

How the fact that this whole “I’m just not ready to settle down” bullshit actually being about another girl doesn’t actually surprise me that much.

Sierra shakes her head at me. “Fuck, Ivy! Get mad!”

I drop the sandwich back down onto the plate. “I am mad, okay? I just have a lot of other things on my mind right now, and a lot more to think about that you can even-”

“Oh, what, like Silas?”

I glare at her and she rolls her eyes.

“Jesus, Ivy, he’s not your stupid high school boyfriend anym-”

“I know that!” I snap, standing suddenly and feeling the blood pounding through me.

Sierra’s mouth snaps shut as she blinks quickly at me.

“I know that, Sierra,” I say, quieter this time. “I’ve known it for eight freaking years.”

“Look, I know I was younger when it all happened, but I just-” she makes a face. “Okay, you know I loved Silas like all of us did, but he was bad news, Ivy. I mean even I knew that.”

“People change,” I say quietly.

“People change or you want people to change?”

I look away.

“Ivy,” Sierra puts a hand on my shoulder. “Look what you’ve got now, this empire you’ve built. Shelter Harbor is always going to be home, but,” she shrugs, “sometimes you need to move forward.”

“I know,” I say with a sigh.

“So why don’t you let it go?”

Because he’s my husband, technically.

It’s a stupid excuse, and I know it. I’ve used it for so long to justify thinking about him in my own head, but the truth of it is, if that were really the only thing still holding me to him, I could have done something about that years ago. Filed for an annulment, or abandonment or something.

God knows I researched it.

But that’s as far as I got. Because it’s more than the rings and the piece of paper filed in the Stoborough town records department, or even the ink on our bodies.

It’s that a piece of my heart that left with him that night.

And there’s something about him being here again, something about his proximity that makes the missing piece feel like it might be closer to being made whole again.

One way or another.