I don’t know what I was thinking when I agreed to go out with Colin again.

Not that I really ever did go out with him. Agreeing to be his date for the gala wasn’t actually a date at all. We were there as friends. Just as friends.

The curling iron on my dressing table hisses and I lift it up gently by the handle, regarding my reflection in the mirror.

But I can’t keep my eyes on myself. I’m afraid I’ll get lost in my own thoughts. I’m afraid I’ll let myself get lost thinking of Travis.

My eyes glide easily over to my bedroom window. Right next door, his window taunts me. The lights are off, though, and I don’t know where he is. I know he’s not home, and that’s all that matters. There’s nothing drawing me to his house. Nothing making me peek over, hoping to catch him in his room, reading or strumming on his guitar or sneaking a cigarette out the open window.

There’s nothing making me smile at him. There’s nothing making me grimace, either, except for my own thoughts.

I section off my hair and clip the top part to the crown of my head, letting the rest fall down around my shoulders. Goosebumps plump up on my forearm as I take a lock of limp hair and wrap it around the barrel of the curler, my skin and my body remembering how Travis used to tug at my hair a little when he kissed me. He tugged at the lock of hair just behind my ear, and it drove me crazy when his warm lips came down on mine.

I exhale uneasily and allow the curl to fall down my shoulder. I continue working on sections, but I’m barely paying attention. Even though I’m trying to not think of Travis, all I can think about is that night. The night he proposed to me, the night I couldn’t protect him.

Should I have lied for him? I couldn’t have. It wouldn’t have been right.

And the messed up part is that I don’t know whether he was telling the truth about what happened that night. That’s the worst part. Even though I told the truth, I don’t know if it was a lie or the truth that locked him up.

I continue doing my hair and applying my makeup for my date with Colin, and my stomach churns with regret. He thinks I’ve been sick, so I could just tell him I can’t make it.

As I’m applying my mascara, my phone buzzes across the room on my dresser. I pad over in my pajamas, hoping it’s Colin cancelling on me.

But someone else’s name lights up the screen.

It’s Travis.

I’m coming over. We need to talk.

My heart flutters into my stomach. He always talked to me like that. He knew what he wanted. He was decisive. Which is why it hurt that much more when he took everything away from me.

But still, I can’t help it when my stomach flips over and my guts churn with a forbidden desire. I can’t want him. I can’t have him. I won’t allow myself to.

Where are you? I shoot back.

I walk tentatively over to my window and peek outside. All of the lights inside his house are off. I don’t think he’s home. He can’t know that I’m home. He can’t know he can just come by and I’ll be here.

He doesn’t respond, and instead I see him come out of his house. I shake my head and put my hands down on my window sill. It hurts to know that he was inside his house with all the lights off. It hurts to think that he wants to talk to me and I won’t let him.

Travis doesn’t bother locking his front door behind him. When he gets halfway between our houses, he looks up into my window and waves, a bright smile illuminated in the soft twilight moon. I swallow thickly and my heart clenches, but adrenaline and excitement flood my body.

No, I say to myself, stepping away from the window. I know he saw me, but I won’t let him in.

I won’t let him in again.

I’m busy, I text him. I’m getting ready to go out.

“I have a key to your house,” he calls up to my window.

I don’t know how I could have forgotten. My parents gave his dad a key years and years ago. It’s what neighbors do. And that’s what he is now, and that’s all he is. Even though my dad never fully trusted Travis, he knew that he was a good neighbor. He always shoveled snow for the elderly people on our street, helped out where he could. So Dad was okay with Mr. Bloom having a key to our house. In fact, he was happy about it, in case of an emergency. Even cops need good neighbors, I suppose.

I pad back over to the window and peer down. He looks so much better than I remember. I guess I didn’t get a chance to really look at him when I saw him at the bowling alley. His hair is pushed away from his face like it always was, and he’s wearing a t-shirt that looks as though it could tear right off his body if he flexes his muscles hard enough.

And his smile. That boyish smile that used to make me feel warm inside. Now he’s all grown up. He isn’t the boy I used to catch lightening bugs with anymore. My breath catches in my throat. He looks even more grown up than he did a year ago.

“That key is for emergencies only,” I shout down to him through the open window.

“That’s not a no,” he teases, but there’s gravity in his voice. “If you tell me to go, I’ll go back home. But if you don’t say anything else, I’m coming in.”

I duck behind the wall and press my back against it as my fingers come to my lips. I know what I want to say. I want to tell him that he hurt me, that I needed him a year ago, that nothing can make up for the hurt he caused me. That I don’t understand why he did this to me.

And more importantly, I don’t understand why he did this to himself.

But I can’t speak. My body is filled with want for him, with a desire I can’t push away.

Because he’s right. We do need to talk. Even though, right now, I can’t say a single word.