Then yes.
Then I hung up before changing my mind.
My mother drove me to the station in silence.
The sky had gone gray again. Rain streaked the windshield. The town looked different through water, less real, as if all the familiar streets were being erased and redrawn while I watched.
Caleb was in a small room with beige walls and a vending machine humming outside the door.
He stood when I entered.
He looked terrible.
Still in his prom shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbows, tie gone, hair messy, eyes red from not sleeping. Without the glow of ballroom lights, he seemed younger. Not the football captain. Not the boy every girl wanted.
Just a boy who had carried a secret too heavy for his bones.
He looked at me.
Then at the floor.
“I didn’t know if you’d come.”
“I almost didn’t.”
He nodded.
“That would have been fair.”
