There is an old photo of us from the summer we met. It is a close up shot. Your chin is lifted slightly and I can see the cleft there. Your eyes are squinting behind your glasses and you smile with your mouth closed. I am sitting on your lap and my face is tilted away, just a hair, sunglasses pushing my bangs up off of my face. My smile is toothy, my arm around your neck. Our faces are pressed close together. We look like a couple. People ask me who my boyfriend is when they see that photo. No, I say, cheeks flushing, he isn’t mine.

We went miniature golfing that day, just you, me, and Jeremy. He’s the one who took our photo that afternoon as we all three rested in the gazebo.

That picture was one of four I had framed and hung in the entryway of my old apartment in Manhattan. Do you remember? It’s where you slept over that time on my couch. The next morning, we ate breakfast at the AppleJack Diner across the street. I had oatmeal. You had pancakes.

Years later, as we lay entangled in the dark, you would tell me how you’d glimpsed a pink thong in my hand that night when I came out of the bathroom, changed into pajamas.

‘Good Night, Danny,’ I said, turning off the light and climbing into my twin bed.

‘Good Night,’ you echoed from the couch, your palms itching to touch me that night ten years ago.

When you went away, it hurt too much to know where that photo was, sitting face down atop my desk. I hid it somewhere and I can’t remember where I put it. But how can that be, when I hid it so carefully?

Once a year, I look for it. I open every envelope, flip through every book, pull back every piece of furniture. It’ll turn up, I tell myself. It has to.