I went to the grocery store later that day and bought stuff for dinner. Spaghetti and sauce and lettuce and tomato for a salad. I cooked it around seven, thinking, ha!

This will show him how healthily I can eat. I ended up overcooking the pasta and not rinsing the lettuce thor-oughly enough, but it still tasted fine.

Conrad didn’t come home, though, so I ate it alone in front of the TV. I did put some leftovers on a plate for him, though, and I left it on the counter when I went up to bed.

The next morning, it was gone and the dish was washed.

Chapter Thirty-one

The next time we spoke to each other, it was the middle of the day and I was sitting at the kitchen table with my wedding binder. Now that we had our guest list, the next thing I needed to do was mail off our invitations. It almost seemed silly to bother with invitations when we had so few guests, but a mass e-mail didn’t feel quite right either.

I got the invitations from David’s Bridal. They were white with light turquoise shells, and all I had to do was run them through the printer. And poof, wedding invitations.

Conrad opened the sliding door and stepped into the kitchen. His gray T-shirt was soaked in sweat, so I guessed he’d gone for a run. “Good run?” I asked him.

“Yeah,” he said, looking surprised. He looked at my stack of envelopes and asked, “Wedding invitations?”

“Yup. I just need to go get stamps.”

Pouring himself a glass of water, he said, “I need to go into town and get a new drill at the hardware store. The post office is on the way. I can get your stamps.”

It was my turn to look surprised. “Thanks,” I said, “but I want to go and see what kind of love stamps they have.”

He downed his water.

“Do you know what a love stamp is?” I didn’t wait for him to answer. “It’s a stamp that says ‘love’ on it. People use them for weddings. I only know because Taylor told me I had to get them.”

Conrad half smiled and said, “We can take my car if you want. Save you a trip.”

“Sure,” I said.

“I’m gonna take a quick shower. Give me ten minutes,” he said, and ran up the stairs.

Conrad was back downstairs in ten minutes, just like he said. He grabbed his keys off the counter, I slid my invitations into my purse, and then we headed out to the driveway.

“We can take my car,” I offered.

“I don’t mind,” he said.

It felt sort of funny sitting in the passenger seat of Conrad’s car again. His car was clean; it still smelled the same.

“I can’t remember the last time I was in your car,” I said, turning on the radio.

Without missing a beat, he said, “Your prom.”

Oh, God.

Prom. The site of our breakup—us fighting in the parking lot in the rain. It was embarrassing to think of it now. How I had cried, how I had begged him not to go.

Not one of my finest moments.

There was an awkward silence between us, and I had a feeling we were both remembering the same thing.

To fill the silence I said brightly, “Gosh, that was, like, a million years ago, huh?”

This time he didn’t reply.

Conrad dropped me off in front of the post office and said he’d be back to pick me up in a few minutes. I hopped out of the car and ran inside.

The line moved quickly, and when it was my turn, I said, “Can I see your love stamp, please?”

The woman behind the counter rifled through her drawer and slid a sheet of stamps over to me. They had wedding bells on them and love was inscribed on a ribbon tying the bells together.

I set my stack of invitations on the counter and counted them quickly. “I’ll take a sheet,” I said.

Eyeing me, she asked, “Are those wedding invitations?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Do you want to hand cancel them?”

“Pardon?”

“Do you want to hand cancel them?” she repeated, and this time she sounded annoyed.

I panicked. What did “hand cancel” mean? I wanted to text Taylor and ask, but there was a line growing behind me, so I said hastily, “No, thank you.”

After I paid for the stamps, I went outside, sat on the curb, and stamped all my invitations—one for my mother, too.

Just in case. She could still change her mind. There was still a chance. Conrad drove up as I was pushing them through the mail slot outside. This was really happening. I was really getting married. No turning back now, not that I wanted to.

Climbing into the car, I asked, “Did you get your new drill?”

“Yep,” he said. “Did you find your love stamps?”

“Yep,” I said. “Hey, what does it mean to hand cancel mail?”

“Canceling is when the post office marks the stamp so it can’t be used again. I guess hand canceling would be doing it by hand instead of machine.”

“How did you know that?” I asked, impressed.

“I used to collect stamps.”

That was right. He had collected stamps. I’d forgotten.

He kept them in a photo album his dad gave him.

“I totally forgot about that. Holy crap, you were so serious about your stamps. You wouldn’t even let us touch your book without permission. Remember how Jeremiah stole one and used it to send a postcard and you were so mad you cried?”

“Hey, that was my Abraham Lincoln stamp that my grandpa gave me,” Conrad said defensively. “That was a rare stamp.”

I laughed, and then he did too. It was a nice sound.

When was the last time we’d laughed like this?

Shaking his head, he said, “I was such a little geek.”

“No, you weren’t!”

Conrad threw me a look. “Stamp collecting. Chemistry set. Encyclopedia obsession.”

“Yeah, but you made all of that seem cool,” I said. In my memory Conrad was no geek. He was older, smarter, interested in grownup things.

“You were gullible,” he said. And then, “When you were really little, you hated carrots. You wouldn’t eat them. But then I told you that if you ate carrots, you’d get X-ray vision. And you believed me. You used to believe everything I said.”

I did. I really did.

I believed him when he said that carrots could give me X-ray vision. I believed him when he told me that he’d never cared about me. And then, later that night, when he tried to take it back, I guess I believed him again. Now I didn’t know what to believe. I just knew I didn’t believe in him anymore.

I changed the subject. Abruptly, I asked, “Are you going to stay in California after you graduate?”

“It depends on med school,” he said.

“Are you … do you have a girlfriend?”

I saw him start. I saw him hesitate.

“No,” he said.

Chapter Thirty-two

Conrad

Her name was Agnes. A lot of people called her Aggie, but I stuck with Agnes. She was in my chem class. On any other girl, a name like Agnes wouldn’t have worked. It was an old-lady name. Agnes had short dirty-blond hair, it was wavy, and she had it cut at her chin. Sometimes she wore glasses, and her skin was as pale as milk. When we were waiting for the lab to open up one day, she asked me out. I was so surprised, I said yes.

We started hanging out a lot. I liked being around her. She was smart, and her hair carried the smell of her shampoo not just fresh out of the shower but for a whole day. We spent most of our time together studying. Sometimes we’d go get pancakes or burgers after, sometimes we’d hook up in her room during a study break when her roommate wasn’t around. But it was all centered around both of us being premed. It wasn’t like I spent the night in her room or invited her to stay over in mine. I didn’t hang out with her and her friends or meet her parents, even though they lived nearby.

One day we were studying in the library. The semester was almost over. We’d been dating two, almost three, months.

Out of nowhere, she asked me, “Have you ever been in love?”