Jeffrey lay in the hospital bed.

He was thinner than I remembered.

His hair was white now, and time had changed almost every feature of his face.

But somehow, he was still unmistakably Jeffrey.

His eyes found mine immediately.

“Ruthie.”

My throat tightened.

Then I noticed something sitting on the chair beside his bed.

A wooden box.

The second I recognized it, I stopped breathing.

It had belonged to my father.

And I hadn’t seen it since the year he died.

—

Jeffrey and I became best friends when we were seventeen.

Not boyfriend and girlfriend.

Just Jeffrey and Ruth.

At least, that was what we always told people.

He dated other girls.

I went out with other boys.

I even attended prom with someone else, although Jeffrey ended up driving me there after my date’s car broke down.

Everyone around us thought we were ridiculous.

Our families were convinced that sooner or later, we would realize what they already believed was obvious.

My mother, Erica, used to watch us sitting at the kitchen table arguing over homework.

“One day,” she would say, “you two are finally going to figure this out.”

Jeffrey would grin.

“Figure out what?”

Mom would just smile.

“You know exactly what.”

Then Jeffrey would look at me, and I would roll my eyes.

“We’re friends, Mom.”

And technically, that was true.

The truth underneath it was something neither of us was brave enough to examine.

I think we were both more afraid of losing the friendship than we were excited by the possibility of becoming something more.

So we left things exactly as they were.

Until one summer night when we were nineteen.

We had both gone on terrible dates.

Mine had spent nearly the entire evening talking about himself.

Jeffrey’s date had left early after they argued over some movie.

Later that night, Jeffrey and I met at our old high school football field.

The gates had been left open, so we slipped beneath the bleachers and sat in the grass.

Jeffrey leaned against one of the metal supports.

“We’re terrible at this.”

I laughed.

“At dating?”

“At choosing people.”

“That might be true.”

He became quiet.