We’ve run out of things to say.

We’re twenty minutes into a thirty-minute drive, when I realize Fiona and I have said all the things people say to catch up. The banal. The mundane. I used what’s-been-happening-in-your world chatter to tell Fiona I graduated with honors from Stanford, made it through first year of Harvard law and start my second in the fall.

Fiona was uncharacteristically succinct about the last five years. College. Volleyball. Professional teams giving her looks. Nothing her mother hadn’t already told me. CliffsNotes, when I want the unabridged, footnoted version of her life since the last time I saw her.

I want to know if she ever acquired a taste for olives.

I want to know the last practical joke she pulled.

I want to know how she got the scar just above her eyebrow so tiny only someone who’d memorized the exotic canvas of her face would notice.

I want to know if that bastard jock Barkley was just her first, or the first of many.

I want to know if she missed me.

As much as I missed her.

I white-knuckle the steering wheel, trapping all the tension between my fingers. In a glance, I absorb Fiona sitting beside me. Statue-tense. Sky blue graduation gown thrown across her lap. Full bottom lip pulled between her teeth.

Shiny black hair, a gift from her Native American father, tumbles over one shoulder. Long slim fingers toy with the star charm bracelet I gave her.

The star charm bracelet I gave her?

“You still wear it.” I pitch my voice low and steady. Much steadier than the stupid heartbeat accelerating at the sight of my gift on her wrist, a reminder of all the nights we studied the stars through a telescope on the balcony connecting our bedrooms.

Fiona turns her attention away from the scenery outside the passenger window, meeting my eyes for a whole second before lowering her lashes, studying the restless hands in her lap.

“Sorry,” she mumbles. “What?”

“The bracelet I gave you. I didn’t expect you to still wear it.”

“Of course, I still have it.”

“Have it, yeah. But wear it?”

“It’s a nice bracelet.” Voice hushed and defensive, she finally looks at me again, her green eyes a lush, guarded forest I can’t see through.

Not that nice.

“Sorry I never called or anything,” I offer stiltedly.

There. I’m the first one to say something real.

I delivered the comment to the windshield in front of me.

“I didn’t expect you to.”

She delivers hers to her lap.

“And you never tried to get in touch with me,” I point out.

I risk a glance, the space of a heartbeat, in her direction.

“You told me not to.”

And you listened to that shit? The one time you listen to me, and it’s on that?

“I didn’t see where we had much to talk about it.” I let my words settle around us, like fine dust particles clogging the air. “Then.”

“And now?” she asks softly.

They say time heals all wounds. Fuck “they.” What the hell do “they” know? Have “they” ever had their heart busted open with a crowbar? By the girl they would have trusted with their lives? That night is a broken bone that’s never healed right. It aches with the weather. Gives me problems when I’m tired. And at her question, I feel a fresh flare of pain. As sharp and bright as it was the night she broke me. It steals my breath and my words and my good intentions to make things right.

“And now, Justice?” she repeats, turning in her seat to face me.

“I don’t know, Fi.” I fix my eyes on the sign for Lillith’s exit, wishing it could guide me to more than her apartment.

“Why did you come to my graduation?” she asks.

“Your mom invited me.”

“But why did you come? After all this time, and shutting me out the way you did, why did you come?”

“I don’t know.” I answer. “Guess I thought it was time.”

“Time for what?”

“Time to put the past behind us?” I execute a shrug, the best answer my body has.

She’d fired her questions at me like a flurry of bullets, and the sudden silence hurts my ears.

“I’m glad you came,” she finally says.

“Are you?” I keep my eyes trained on the road

“Yes.”

I hazard a glance, noting the battle going on in her head play out on her face. She’s balling up to broach something I don’t want to discuss. I can tell. Even after five years, she’s still a book I’ve read so many times I barely have to look at the pages to know the next line.

“There’s something I need to explain about that night, Justice. About Barkley.”

“Don’t.” Rage blows its hot breath down my neck. “Don’t explain, and don’t say his fucking name.”

“But, Just—”

“We’re here.” I pull into a parking spot, slamming roughly on the brakes. “You see your mom’s car?”

I focus all my attention on the windshield sticker reminding me it’s almost time for an oil change. I silently will her not to revisit that night. If she starts talking about it, I might physically remove her from my car, dump her in the parking lot and drive off.

She doesn’t look away from my profile, and if she is waiting for me to look at her, she’ll be waiting a long time. Her sigh is my reprieve and her surrender.

“The green Kia Sorento.”

“Well, at least we know she’s here. Let’s go make sure she’s OK.”