“You think we made a baby?” Zeke asks with a contented smile before he collapses on top of me, his body hot and wet with sweat.

“Maybe,” I say.

“You’re not sure, huh? Better try again tonight to make sure.”

I giggle. If sex is always going to be like this, I’m up for it any time.

Zeke pulls out of me and rolls off me. He lies on his side as he catches his breath, looking at me with tenderness in his eyes.

I’ve seen that look before—a long time ago. I didn’t think I’d ever see it again, but there it is.

“You’re as beautiful as I remember,” Zeke says as he strokes my hair. Just like it was all those years ago, Zeke seems sincere.

But things are not always as they appear. Maybe he acts like this with every woman he’s been with. Zeke has always had a reputation, even back when he was younger and still working for my father.

“Did you really care about me, Zeke?” I ask.

“Of course I did. I still do,” he answers quickly, with no hesitation.

“Please don’t lie to me. You can be honest. You don’t have to say anything just because you think that’s what I want to hear.”

“I’m being honest, I swear. I’m sorry I never told you about Joanne, Ali,” he says, out of nowhere. “I’d been hiding her existence for so long that it felt strange to suddenly start talking about her.”

I appreciate his honesty, but there are other things I want to know, things I’ve been wondering about for the past seven years.

“Zeke, this is going to sound like a weird question. But remember when you said you were going to move to New Haven to be with me?” I ask, my heart picking up its speed again.

Zeke said a lot of things, many of which he never made good on. This whole time, I’ve been assuming that he didn’t mean them.

But if he still cares about me after all these years, then… Then maybe there’s a chance that he meant them after all. Maybe he was just too dumb to know what to do…?

We were just kids. He was only twenty-one, and I had just turned eighteen. We were young and stupid—both of us. Looking back, I could’ve been more frank with him, too.

“I remember,” Zeke says. “I was hoping you wouldn’t.”

“Was that just a line? Did you make promises to every girl you saw?”

If this was seven years ago, I wouldn’t want to ask the question, afraid of what he’d say.

But things are different now. I’m different. I’m a big girl now. I can take whatever he answers.

“No,” he says. “You were the only one. Even now. Yes, I’ve seen other people, as I’m sure you have, too. But you’re the one who’s always on my mind. I can’t get you out of there. I’ve tried.”

“Then… Why?”

Zeke frowns in confusion. “Why what?”

“Why… Well, a lot of things. Why were you so unavailable? How come you never picked up my calls? What happened to your plan to come to New Haven to be with me? Why did everything change, as soon as I moved away?”

“I… I didn’t think it was… I didn’t think I had a real chance to be with you, Ali.”

“What does that even mean?” I ask, getting worked up even though I’m aware it’s dumb to get angry over something that happened seven years ago. “I was with you, wasn’t I? You were the one who pushed me away.”

“Yeah, but… I was never… We were so young, Ali. And we were so different. I didn’t think it was going to work out.”

“And you decided that without even talking about it with me.”

“Like I said, I didn’t want to look weak in front of you,” Zeke says with a sad smile. “Everybody was telling me to stay away from you, Ali. The other guards, they told me your dad would kill me if he knew what I was doing with you. And they were right. You know he wouldn’t have been happy.”

“But if you had moved to New Haven, he wouldn’t have even been there. It was just going to be you and me.”

“I couldn’t go, Ali. I couldn’t leave Joanne.”

“But you said you would.”

“Yeah, I did. I’m sorry, Ali.” Zeke seems to be genuinely remorseful. And he appears sincere. But nothing adds up. I’d understand him having to stay by his sister if they only had each other, but he didn’t have to make me empty promises.

“Why did you say you would, then?”

“I really thought I could. And then Joanne got sick. Really sick. She started to miss work. She couldn’t earn enough to support herself. I had to help her. I couldn’t justify moving when I knew she needed me. I couldn’t spend money moving to New Haven, when I knew she might lose her home if I didn’t help her with rent.”

“I had no idea you were going through something like that,” I say.

“Like you said, I never told you. And I realize now that was dumb. I just felt like I had nothing. No money, no freedom, no future. I thought I had nothing to offer you, Ali, and you were going to see that, sooner or later.”

I want to tell Zeke that he’s wrong, that my life would’ve turned out better with him, even if we were penniless. But I’m not ready for the direction in which that conversation could go.

So I change the subject.

“How’s Joanne doing right now?” I ask.

“She actually recovered for a while. She got back to work. She even got married and had a baby.” Zeke pauses. His eyes take on a faraway look. “And then, her husband died and she stopped taking care of herself. She fell ill. When they checked her up at the hospital, they found some cancer cells that had started to grow back.”

“Oh, no.”

“Yeah.” Zeke takes a deep breath. “It sucks. But she tells me she feels like she’s been given seven extra years to live. It’s annoying how optimistic she is sometimes.”

“She sounds like a great person,” I say.

“She is.”

“Could I see her?”

Zeke hesitates, pausing for a moment, before he finally says, “Yeah, sure.” Then he adds, “Just don’t say anything about our little agreement.”