The first small yellow square held Caitlin’s careful, looping script. Gemma had found the note stuck to the inside of her biology textbook during her very first college lecture. More yellow, pink, green, and blue sticky notes were stuck together.
Found your lucky pen! What will you trade me for it? ;)
Eres mi toro xo
Don’t forget your breakfast!
Meet me in the dining hall at 7? I have a surprise for you.
The weight of all those individual moments suddenly became too heavy. These notes had once meant everything to Gemma, but now the words fell flat. She couldn’t bear to keep reading them.
A glass-framed certificate near the bottom caught her eye. She didn’t know how she had forgotten about this.
Caitlin and Gemma had spent countless nights together in high school, sneaking out to spend time alone while the rest of the town slept. Sometimes, they would spread out a nest of blankets and pillows in one of their backyards on clear nights and just hold each other, gazing up at the millions of twinkling dots in the sky. They would whisper into the darkness and kissfor hours, sleep being the last thing on their minds at seventeen.
Then, for Gemma’s eighteenth birthday, Caitlin had surprised her with the framed certificate, proof that she had had a star named after her. Holding it between her hands now, Gemma felt the same sweet tenderness that had flooded her when she’d been given it eleven years ago.
Delicately placing the frame onto the floor, Gemma sifted through the rest of the box. And there it was. Lodged beneath the photographs and love letters, tucked into the bottom corner of the stacks, her fingers brushed against the velvet.
She pulled out the little black ring box, her chest collapsing with grief. Gemma rocked forward, holding herself as the tears fell, past and present colliding into one fierce ache.
Before she could lift the top and see the diamond nestled into the pillow, Gemma buried the velvet box back into the recesses of the plastic bin along with all the other items she had taken out.
A thud sounded from the other room, the closing of her front door.
“Gemma! I’m so sorry I’m late!” Hayley yelled from the entryway.
Gemma heard her best friend rummaging through her kitchen cabinet before footsteps headed her way.
“There’s still an hour left of your birthday, though, and I brought expensive wine,” Hayley chirped, rounding the corner.
Hayley came to an abrupt stop when she spotted Gemma crumpled onto the floor, crying into a high school cheerleading T-shirt in front of the box of memories.
“Gem, sweetie.” Hayley immediately recognized what she was looking at, knowing that plastic bin all too well.
Hayley rushed to Gemma’s side, placing the wine bottle and glasses onto the floor, wrapping both arms around her.
Gemma let herself go, sobbing into Hayley’s steady arms as herfriend gently rocked her. For a beat, they were nineteen again, Gemma’s anguish just as raw as it had been ten years ago.
NINETEEN
Fall Semester, Junior Year of High School
IT WAS AUTUMN AGAIN ATWestmore High, barely two months into Caitlin’s junior year, when Kristie sat down next to her at the end of the cafeteria table.
“Didyouknow that the new girl from Detroit is a lesbian?”
Caitlin willed her features flat, clenching her jaw as she fought to remain expressionless. “Okay, and? Her name is Gemma, by the way, and she’s not even new. She’s been here for a year.”
Kristie scoffed. “Whatever, you know what I mean. I just wish she would stop making out with her girlfriend all over campus.”
Caitlin stopped chewing, suddenly feeling nauseated. She had thought about Gemma all summer—what she was up to and who she was with—but Caitlin had been too much of a coward to actually reach out to her.
Five months ago, Caitlin had kissed Gemma and then panicked, destroying the delicate balance of their friendship in the process. She had only wanted to feel the softness of Gemma’s lips, not expecting the explosion of color and light that had followed. It had been too impossible to name and, at the time, too beautiful to bear.
Hearing Kristie’s gossip—another girl now kissing Gemma’s lips—caused agony to rip through Caitlin. It felt like salt, ground into an open wound.
Scooping up her plastic tray, lunch scarcely touched, Caitlin stormed out of the cafeteria. As she made her way toward the exit, she spotted Gemma sitting at her usual table with Darbie and Emily.
