Page 74 of Seven Days in June

Yesterday was both too much and not enough. The day had left him in knots, and now Shane had a restless, bone-deep itch to be in her vicinity. He wanted to watch her do things, say things. Hold her hand, make her laugh. Fuck her senseless. Give her everything she hadn’t had in so long. Give her the best of him.

According to AA guidelines, relationships were forbidden until you were two years sober. This rule made sense, but Shane couldn’t have anticipated this happening.

High school relationships aren’t supposed to be meaningful, he reasoned.Our frontal lobes weren’t even developed. How did we know it was real?

Teenagers didn’t know how to distinguish between a crush and something deeper—let alone be right about it. At seventeen, Shane hadn’t been right about anything. But her.

His mind flashed back to one small moment at the Dream House. Eva was under him, breathless and blissed out, her mouth plush from kissing and her cheeks on fire from climaxing. And Shane was deeply, existentially happy. He buried his face in her neck and gathered her up in his arms, clinging to her so tightly, he couldn’t fathom ever letting her go.

The embrace felt monumental, like they were melding together all the people they’d ever been over the years. Closing the loop. Eva nuzzled her face against Shane’s throat, lips skimming just under his jaw.

“Missing you never ends,” she said on an exhale.

But before he had a chance to say the same thing back to her, she slipped out from under him. And was gone.

Shane understood why she’d left. But it had crushed him. He’d gotten her back, only to lose her again.

Shane had always felt tortured by his memory of that week. He saw it all, so clearly. Every detail, in vivid technicolor. No drink could make him forget. But what he hadn’t banked on was the seemingly insignificant but monumentally important details he’d forgotten about Eva coming back to him.

Like when Spotify plays a song you haven’t heard since childhood, and it reminds you who you are. Like “Oh yeah, I’m a person who knows all the words to Will Smith’s ‘Wild Wild West.’”

When Eva left yesterday, Shane had been resigned to leaving her alone. It hurt like hell, but he deserved it. So he kept himself busy for the rest of the day. He went for a six-mile run, chilled, didn’t drink, ate something, didn’t drink, tried to write, didn’t drink, and then slept. But then Eva sent that text. And somehow, he’d found himself sitting on her stoop, waiting for her to open the door.

His phone buzzed, and he yanked it out of his jeans so fast, his pocket went inside out.

It was Ty.

“WYD,” said the teen.

“It remains to be seen,” said Shane, peering up into Eva’s window.

Shane had talked to Ty yesterday. And two days before that. He committed to twice-weekly check-ins with all his mentees. Sometimes, just hearing the voice of someone who believed in you could turn a shit day into something a bit brighter.

“Ty, why aren’t you in school?”

“It’s the second-to-last day of the year,” he said, offering no further explanation.

“How’s your girl?”

“Good.”

And then Shane launched into the rapid-fire questions he asked all his kids.

“You turning in completed homework?”

“Yeah.”

“You engaging in any illegal or nefarious activity?”

“What ‘nefarious’ means.”

“Criminal.”

Ty paused, thinking. “Nah?”

“You fighting?”

“Not since you was here.”

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