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“Let’s play a game,” Dante said, like he always did, like it was any other summer day.
Like he wasn’t 600 miles away at a college that would never have even looked twice at my high school transcript.
I laughed.
“Okay, what are the rules?”
“Tell me a secret, anything you haven’t told me before, and I’ll do the same.”
“Alright,” I said, and squeezed the phone so tightly the plastic protested. “Alright, tell me a secret.”
“I miss my mother’s cooking,” he said, and I laughed again. “Your turn.”
“I stole a stack of books from your room,” I said.
He gasped in mock outrage.
“You were out when I called last week, so I talked to your dad about that art book I gave him when we met,” he said.
I took a breath, slowly, in and out.
“Sometimes I stare at the phone and think about calling you first,” I said, “but then I never do.”
He was silent for a moment, so long that I thought I should hang up.
“I sat in my dorm and cried yesterday, because I miss you and my parents so much. You and my parents, that’s what I miss the most about home.”
“Not swimming?”
He laughed, in a way that sounded more like crying than anything.
“No, not swimming. You.”
I closed my eyes and stayed silent.
“Ari,” Dante said, “tell me a secret.”
I knew what to say. It wasn’t a secret, not really, but it was something I had never told him before.
“I love you.”