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count the licks to the center of a Tootsie Pop with me?
    Those are the first words I ever spoke to him, hours after his family moved in next door, the moment he slipped into my heart. We were an unlikely pair from the start. I was the spunky five-year-old girl who spent her time fooling around in the diner’s kitchen, while he was the golden boy—two years older and son of the beloved Dr. Greg and Charlotte Preston—who attended private school with Wes and dressed like he belonged in a yuppie children’s clothing catalog.
    Kneeling on the bed, I touch the thumbtack wedged into the windowsill, once a part of our secret messaging system consisting of a pair of recycled soup cans and a long piece of yarn that ran between our windows. My mind flickers to a memory of a gap-toothed boy and a pigtailed little girl, soup-can phones pressed against their ears in the dead of night, trying not to laugh too loudly so they wouldn’t get caught.
    Pieces of Nick are scattered everywhere. My eyes lock on one of the photos pinned to the bulletin board. With shaking hands, I pull it free. An ache spreads through my chest.
    The picture was taken at the base of Turner Falls, the lush Arbuckle Mountains flowing with clear, spring-fed streams behind us. Annabelle was piggybacking on Wes, hands resting on his shoulders, a cheek pressed against his. They were bright smiles and freckled noses and neon sunglasses. Beside them, Nick and I were wrapped up in each other’s arms, not a gap between us. His eyes were closed as he kissed my forehead, while mine were squinting against the sun, a silly, stupid grin on my face, my blond hair dancing in the breeze.
    I remember that Labor Day camping trip so clearly. Wes had driven the four of us north in his Jeep until SMU and the Dallas city lights faded into Oklahoma country sky. The guys constructed two tents while Annabelle and I unloaded the car. For three days, we splashed around in swimming holes and explored caves and hiked the trails that ran through the park. At night beneath the stars, with the sounds of waterfalls and the wilderness surrounding us, we told ghost stories and sang along as Nick strummed on my father’s old Taylor acoustic guitar and roasted marshmallows around the campfire. And when bedtime came, Annabelle and Wes crawled into one tent while Nick and I retired to the other, spending the hours we should have been sleeping memorizing every inch of one another’s skin.
    The version of me in this photo would tell you without hesitation that Nick and I would last forever, we’d been so swept up in each other.
    There was a time when one look into his deep blue eyes would make me feel like I was drowning, when a smile from him would send my heart skittering in my chest, when a feather-light touch from his calloused hand would ignite a fire inside me.
    When I believed he would never let me go.
    But that was the love of youth and idealism. All-consuming feelings like that could never keep a relationship together—they certainly weren’t enough to save us. There’s something to be said for stability, companionship, comfort.
    Everything I have with Drew , I tell myself as I pin the picture to the board and take a deep breath, the ache in my chest dulling. Everything I want.

FOUR

    THE NEXT MORNING, armed with an arsenal of binders and papers I stole from the diner’s office, I return to the Prickly Pear. It’s busier than yesterday, but I’m still able to snag the corner table near the windows. With its purple-painted brick, cascading chandeliers constructed entirely from recycled eyeglasses, and vintage movie posters decoupaged onto the floor, there’s a coziness to this place that helps me concentrate.
    If I plan on overseeing diner business from Chicago, I need to devote some time familiarizing myself with the diner’s records. Otherwise my father will be badgering me with phone calls every two seconds while he recuperates from surgery when my focus should be on executing the