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Kwame is easy to spot at the bar, even if it’s been almost seven years since she’s seen him, the first man she ever truly loved. Then, as now, her first observation is how handsome he is… still. Even from a distance she can tell his body has filled out, a long way and a lot of muscle from the lanky boy she first met at eighteen. His hair has filled out—the Afro a good two inches longer than the close fade he sported back in the day.

Simone stands still for a minute because she doesn’t trust herself to walk steadily and confidently just yet, not when her mind has suddenly and inconveniently shot her straight back to the day he broke her heart. They’d spent that scorching hot September afternoon tangled, naked, in sweaty sheets in her tiny studio apartment on Rollins with the Japanese screen to separate her bed from the “living room.” The soothing whir of the totally useless fan, the faded stripes on her sheets, the ladybug on the windowsill, Kwame’s thumb making lazy circles around her nipple. Simone can picture it all.

She can only conclude that the reason her memory of this scene remains so vivid is because of the gut punch of what came next: the two of them eating pancakes at the Pretty Plate, basking in a postcoital glow and thinking about how happy they were as a couple, three years behind them and forever to go.

She’d been innocently pouring syrup when Kwame said, “We need to talk.”

In the history of human conversation, nothing good has ever followed those words. Sure enough, Kwame started going on about how he’d been thinking he needed to have “some space.” They were starting their senior year—“crunch time”—and he couldn’t afford any distractions from his work at the Daily Northwestern. He had thrust himself into investigating a dean who was allegedly having affairs with several undergrads. He needed to focus. This story could be his big break, his calling card, a way to open doors after graduation.

Simone had poured syrup over half her plate and the table because she was so distracted by being labeled a “distraction,” and as a factor that came between Kwame and his future when she thought she was his future. She was also trying to process how barely an hour ago she was naked, submitting to Kwame’s caresses when all the while he knew this was coming, that he was about to dump her before the oxytocin even wore off. Not only dump her, but justify it in the name of his ambition.

The heartbreak was swift and brutal—all the more so because it was so unexpected. It was like she was out for a relaxing stroll and plummeted through an open manhole. How could you prepare for the shock and indignity of that? She and Kwame had been together since their first freshman mixer, where they’d instantly clicked over their shared love of linguistics videos on YouTube, the jazz music that made them feel sophisticated, and their penchant for perfectionism.

Kwame was an integral part of her college experience. He was her college experience. And her life. And suddenly, it was nothing. They were nothing. She was so stunned listening to him say, “I’m sorry, Simone. I gotta do this. But who knows what the future holds,” that all she could do was shrug. Standing at the restaurant now, Simone is equally stunned by how stubborn the pain of her young heartbreak remains, like noticing the intense itch of a mosquito bite that’s been there for days.

She beelines for the bar before she changes her mind, grateful that he suggested this place instead of the Side Show, the bar near Northwestern’s campus where they’d spent so many afternoons studying, talking, eating mozzarella sticks, and staring giddily at each other like they were the best—and only—people on earth.

“Hi,” she says, slipping into the high-back chair next to Kwame after the briefest pause to consider—and dismiss—an awkward side hug or cheek kiss.

“Hi there.” Kwame looks startled by her presence, and somehow she doesn’t think it’s because she snuck up on him. “You’re here.”

She laughs. “Um, well, you invited me to lunch, didn’t you?” A text Simone stared at on and off for three hours before agreeing to it.

“Yeah, yeah. I’m glad we got to fit this in before the panel.” He drops the phone he’d been hunched over and wipes his hands across his suit pants, then picks up the menu and starts to fidget. Simone reaches for his hand both to still it and because the thought of touching him has lingered in her mind since they sat down. At the last second she stops herself and grabs her menu instead.

“It’s good to see you. I don’t know about this panel, though! Happy to do it, but you’re big-time now. You could have found a bigger name than me. Soledad O’Brien wasn’t available?”

“Ah, come on, Simone, don’t do that. You’re perfect for the panel. I started reading your new stuff. It’s good, no surprise.”

“What? You’ve been reading my column? How on earth did you even find the Sawville Sentinel? It’s not exactly The Wall Street Journal.”

“Ever heard of Google? You know I gotta keep tabs.”

“Are you stalking me, Kwame Walker?” Simone starts flirting before she can help herself.

“What’s wrong with some innocent lurking?”

“Innocent, huh? Well, it’s not like it’s breaking news. Just some small-time local fluff.”

“No such thing as a ‘small story.’ And at least you’re writing… something, anything… that’s what matters. That’s what’s up.”

These words pierce through her self-deprecating armor, not just because they are from Kwame, whom she’s always appreciated praise from since the days when he was her first reader, but because he’s right. It’s okay that her stories aren’t splashy headlines or changing lives at the moment. She’d convinced herself her new column was just her silly little side hobby. She wasn’t even offended when Alex basically called it that when she’d told him she’d somewhat spontaneously pitched it to the Sentinel’s editor when they were in the buffet line at the club. “Oh, good, you’ll have something to keep you busy while Langston’s at school.” But Kwame taking her efforts seriously reminds Simone that she should too. “Thank you, that means a lot.”

“Just calling it like I see it. Besides, you are big-time, Simone. You were on the team that won the Trib that Pulitzer for uncovering the priest abuse.”

“I was a junior reporter on a team of twenty.”

“You were still on it. And you were the best junior reporter they had. The students are gonna want to hear about that.”

“It was also a very long time ago.”

Her job at the paper, on the award-winning investigations team, was the gig that was supposed to get Simone straight to The New York Times in a few short years. She can’t quite pinpoint when she gave up on that or why it was so easy for Alex, whom she’d only been dating for just over a year, to convince her to quit her job and move to Spain with him. The impulsiveness of it seemed like something you were supposed to do before you turned thirty. If not then, when? And she was tired. After four intense years of chugging away at the paper, constantly chasing new leads, working around the clock to prove herself to the editors who still saw her as less competent than the older, whiter male reporters, she was a shell of herself. She loved the reporting and the writing, the change she could see happening in real time. She hated the hours, the bureaucracy, the fact that so much of her work was put under someone else’s byline because they were more senior.

Alex’s invitation offered an escape hatch, one she’d jumped through with the promise to herself that it was only for a year… or two. And then she’d be fortified to get right back in the rat race. Two pink lines on an EPT stick upended that.

Most days Simone can accept that few people live up to their childhood or college dreams, so she’s not exceptional in any way, including deviating from the path she’d thought she was on. But at this moment, as she reflects back, she’s alarmed that she finds herself suddenly fighting inexplicable tears.

“Eh, what is time, you know?” Kwame says, and Simone doesn’t answer because she has no idea, but also because she’s preoccupied with the stubborn lump in her throat. Kwame proceeds, oblivious to the chaos roiling inside her. “I can still remember how Professor Matson told me I would basically never amount to anything, in the same breath he told you that you were a star. He never liked anyone’s work but yours and was always using you as a poster child for the rest of us hacks. ‘Your writing exhibits that rare combination of investigative rigor and narrative grace. You don’t just report facts, you illuminate their significance while respecting your readers’ intelligence.’ ” Kwame manages to perfectly quote their former teacher.