I’d meant what I said about the raw place, but the words I’d used didn’t do it justice. It was a picture in my head, a taste in my mouth, a deep throbbing beat in my ears. I felt that raw place throbbing pink, pulsing with anger and self-loathing. It was where I was powerless and the place I’d tried to forget all those years. The only thing that silenced the throb and washed away the taste was sealing away other people’s raw places.

I was aware that made a decade of philanthropy selfish and vain, but it was the only way to soothe my own hurt.

The garden path was dotted with lights on either side like an airplane runway. I’d been defying gravity for years and I’d suddenly skidded to the earth.

I heard Chris running behind me. I couldn’t outrun him and I didn’t want to. He caught up, came slightly in front of me, and turned so I could see him.

“You said you hadn’t thought about me in years.”

“What do you want me to say? That I had? Or that I hadn’t? What’s going to make you feel better?”

“What’s going to make you feel better?”

I wanted to punch him and run into his arms. “I stopped waiting for you.” I articulated each word as if that would keep me from being misunderstood. “I never forgot how you made me feel.”

He took half a step toward me with his hands out, assuming he knew what I meant. He didn’t.

“You made me feel worthless and forgettable. And I know it was all a misunderstanding, but that was how I felt. You can’t take that away from me, because I carry it everywhere. But also…” I sighed.

My words bent him. Shoulders drooping, hands retreated to his sides, he looked damaged and small with his own exposed, raw places.

“But also…” I continued. “You made me feel loved and whole. I felt passionate and alive, and no one I’ve met since has made me feel like that. So I don’t… I don’t know what to do. I want to seize this thing with you and never let it go, and I want to throw it away to save myself.”

“If I’d stayed, you wouldn’t be who you are. I don’t know how this will sound, but who you are makes me ashamed of who I’ve become.”

“Who is that? I don’t even know.”

He paused as if gathering strength to confess a sin. “A man obsessed with money, and not sense enough to be ashamed of it.”

I started down the path but slowly, inviting him to walk next to me. He fell into line and we walked shoulder to shoulder.

“In my line of work, we solve problems in the stock market and we use these processes called algorithms. They—”

“I know what an algorithm is.”

“You do?”

“Harper rubs off on people.”

“Right. So we use them to assess risk. How much to invest. Where to invest. How long to hold, when to sell. It can get complicated, but they work until they don’t.”

“Is that what happened to your hedge fund?”

He took a long time to answer, walking slowly. “What happened to the fund was that I changed the weighting. I weighted the making money too far over the potential loss, and I made bets without enough data. The scale tipped. And the more I think about it, the more I wonder if I did it on purpose.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Because maybe I knew I needed to be completely miserable before I came back to my roots, and you.”

“It wasn’t about me, Chris. Don’t say that.”

We passed though the garden gate, toward his car.

“I can’t help but think you were the last person who loved me for me. No more and no less. I weight that pretty heavily.”

“I’m just an algorithm then?” I tried not to sound as if I was accusing him of something, because I wasn’t. I was egging him to talk more.

“We all are, but we kid ourselves into thinking we have enough data to run it.” We got to the car, and he unlocked it. “You make me feel like a man with a chance. You made me feel like that when I was sixteen, and I feel like that right now. With you, my future is mine to write, but I need more data. And so do you.”

“You sure know how to make a girl feel all warm and fuzzy.”

“The lights on the tree didn’t work, so I recalibrated.” He opened the passenger door.

“They worked. That’s why I reacted the way I did.” I got in the car before he could answer.

---

We didn’t talk much on the drive back to my house, but as he got off at the Barrington exit, he grabbed my hand and held it. I let him, because his grip was exactly what I needed.

He walked me up the porch.

“I’m sorry I ruined your surprise,” I said. “It was beautiful.”

He slid his hands down my arms and linked his fingers in mine. “I should have come back. Fuck Frank.”

“You can’t. He’s married to a nice guy in San Francisco.”

My resistance was no match for his smile.

“I took years from you,” he said. “We could have been together. I could have taken you back to New York, away from here and this”—he looked for the word and found it— “devastation.”

His word did its job, sending pictures of Barrington through my mind. The closed factory. The boarded-up stores. Jonah Wright born with a hole in his heart and no insurance. The Bordens living in a house with a roof like a sieve. Brooke Frazier, impregnated by a rapist she wouldn’t name.

I’d helped them. I gave them money, time, a ride to far away doctors. Small things.

If I’d been in New York, what would have happened to them?

“I need to think,” I said. “Get data, like you say.”

“Can I see you tomorrow night? At the playground?”

“It’s still there,” I confirmed.

“I’ll pick you up at seven.”

“No. I’ll get there the way I got there the first time.”

“No way. You are not—”

Because I wasn’t getting into an argument about my safety in a town of people who loved me, I interrupted him with a kiss.

I’d never taken a kiss before, so I was clumsy. My focus on my objective overrode my passion. My lips were too stiff and my head pushed forward too hard, but once Chris gave up on finishing his sentence, he came to me, giving willingly what I took from him.

A simple, sweet good night kiss between two kids who had their entire lives in front of them and the weight of the world on their shoulders.