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The last time Seth Moore saw Nina Mendez was at their high school graduation.

Most of what he remembered that day, all had to do with her.

He remembered how her dark brown hair was tied back into this plait that trailed down her neck, ending where her shoulder blades met. He remembered how her smile lit up the grassed field, ensnaring him from a distance.

At that point, they hadn’t spoken a word to each other for a year. To no one’s fault, except his own.

You broke her heart, after all.

It seemed only fitting that he be the one to close the distance, to cross the grassed field and write a closure on their shared time together at high school.

Shared time. As though they shared full memories, and not fleeting moments of stolen glances and pounding hearts.

Six years of high school, gone in a flash.

Five of those years, Nina spent in love with him.

And for every year he knew Nina, Seth had spent denying her.

She was just a classmate.

After he said his goodbye, he wondered if he’d ever see her again.

He wanted to forget her. Truly.

Wanted to forget the way her brown hair would curl as she tucked it behind her ears, forget the way she’d blush whenever he’d glance at her in between classes, or when he’d hand her a pencil to borrow.

Wanted to forget the way she answered questions in class, with a half-raised arm that betrayed a half-confidence, even though she knew that the answer was right.

Nina was no one special.

She wasn’t remarkable in a way that high-school rewards remarkably smart people. Nor was she devastatingly beautiful, in a way that teenage boys would obsess their entire pubescent lives over.

She was just a girl from his class. A heart that he broke.

Forgettable.

Except, Seth Moore could not forget her.

Instead, Nina Mendez continued to exist, tucked away in the liminal spaces of his mind. Even when he hadn’t realised.