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And I wanted to To feel his touch again To let our fingers intertwine To let hied to be comforted

It wouldn’t takeour hands, too, I could see hi me all that and more He wanted it as badly as I did

I cleared htest bit closer toa chasm between us that felt unbreachable "So what happened then? How could they have just forgotten about ether?"

His hands stayed where they were "I can’t say for sure, but if I had to guess I’d say it was all the ti about you, waiting for you You were the glue that held the apart And later, when they realized--when everyone insisted--you weren’t coether because it waseasy" Regret washed over his face "It ht not have been love back then, but it is now"

His words sliced me, not because I hadn’t known the truth Of course I had I’d known froht, when I’d realized they’d gone away to college together But hearing him say it out loud, and maybe because I kneasn’t any easier for him to say than it was for ht now

I shookto tell hied deep in ain soaze landed on the boy in the corner, the one sitting at the table with his back to the wall, facing us I stopped shaking

It was hias station, and fro at the Gas ’n’ Sip, when I’d been standing at the counter to pay, he wasn’t looking at , and he didn’t appear out of place in the quaint, brick-walled coffee shop But he was there nonetheless, and I had the strangest sensation that it wasn’t a coincidence that he’d been at all of those places, the only three public places I’d been without my parents since I’d been back

This ti him closer so he was forced to meet me over the top of the small table Under any other circumstances I would have noticed the coffee s his mouth so close to uy?" Iotten all about Cat and Austin, and I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the dark-skinned boy who seelance out of the corner of his eye to see who I was talking about, and then when he’d gotten a good look, he shook his head "Nah Never seen hi, I told hiht be following me" It sounded way crazier outside of ed "Okay,to do soot out of hand and Tyler ranked side my dad For all I knew, insanity was hereditary "But it’s definitely weird He was at your friend’s bookstore the night ere there And then I saw hi at the Gas ’n’ Sip"

"So basically you’ve seen hi you?"

"This ain,Especially since the guy hadn’t lookedabout hi creepy

"You do realize that nothing’s really changed in the past five years, don’t you? Burlington’s still a s some new shops didn’t exactly transform us into a metropolis People run into each other all the time"

He waited a ht, of course The whole point of coincidence was that it was purely accidental Chance Like two people being in the sa place at the wrong tied forward on ht I totally ruined our" I stopped short I’d co "date," which would’ve been aI’d been watching him from myBesides, it wasn’t a date "coffee," I said instead

His s "You didn’t ruin anything," he assured ht it was the perfect coffee"

I blushed again and tried to think of so to deflect attention away from my verbal slipup "Metropolis, huh? Nice word"

"You like that? I like to pull out the big guns when I’ to make an i to do, impress me?"

There was a beat, a moment in which our eyes met andyou understood that"