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The words sounded so final and far from what I would have expected from their usual breakups. It was the same finality I’d heard in his voice when he was talking to Tiffany outside. It seemed like he was sure that this was the last one.

“But you’re going to get back together, right?” I asked.

He dropped the ball and started dribbling it between his feet the way he had been the other day when I came by to do my homework.

I wondered how often he tried to get out of the house like that, just come down here and play soccer.

He didn’t need the practice; he was playing soccer practically every minute of his life.

But obviously, there was some reason he came out here.

Was he avoiding his family like me? Or was there something else driving him out of the house ?

“You always get back together,” I continued when he didn’t say anything.

With every second that he didn’t answer, I worried more that I’d done something wrong asking if he loved Tiffany last night.

If my words had been the driving force behind this decision.

I never thought I’d want Sebastian to get back together with Tiffany, but the idea that I could be the reason he wasn’t worried me too much.

“I mean, if there’s one thing in life I can count on, it’s the fact that you and Tiffany will get back together again and again and again. ”

He raised his face to look at me. “Do you wait on that?” he asked, his voice sounding hollow. “Is that your form of entertainment, to watch us break up and get back together?”

My breath caught. “Entertainment? Why would that be a form of entertainment for me?”

He shrugged with one shoulder and kicked the ball up, hitting it with his knee, and then caught it in his hands.

“Tiffany seems to think that the whole school likes to watch it. She thinks it’s fun that everybody’s wondering when we’re gonna get back together.

Some people even bet with their friends on it, put numbers on it.

Are we gonna get back together after one week or two weeks?

” He ran his tongue over his lips and I watched the movement almost instinctively.

“For her, I think that was half the fun, knowing that she had everybody else in the palm of her hand.”

“You think sometimes she broke up with you just to get people interested in talking about her?”

He dropped the ball again and started dribbling it across the field, leaving me behind.

I wasn’ t going to let him leave the conversation that easily.

I ran after him, running alongside him as if we were playing an actual game of soccer and I was trying to stay open to a pass.

He didn’t pass it to me, though; he took it all the way to the other side and kicked it into the far net.

We both watched it land in the netting, and neither of us moved to grab it.

“I think it was always a game for her,” Sebastian said.

He put his hands on his hips and stared at the ball.

“All of it: the relationship, the breakups, the getting back together. It was always a game. It was always a test to see how much… how much I would take before I broke it off and then how much before I came crawling back to her. It was never about us . She never loved me.” He sighedand dropped his chin, still standing with his hands on his hips.

“And you already know that I never loved her.”

Yes, I did know. I knew because I’d asked. I’d led him to the conclusion.

“I heard a little bit of your conversation,” I said. I hated to admit it because it made me sound like a total stalker since I had to open my window to be able to hear it. “And she kept saying something about how this time was supposed to be different. What did she mean by that?”

He laughed and ran a hand along his forehead. “You really ask the tough questions sometimes, Nora, huh?”

I just stared at him, waiting for an answer.

“The last time I broke up with her,” he said, “was a couple weeks ago. I told her that was going to be the last time. I said I was done and we weren’t going to do this again.

And well, I guess you know what happened next—I got back with her and promised that this time it was forever.

That I meant what I said about it being the end of us breaking up and getting back together on a cycle, but this time it was real. ”

“But why did you go back?” I asked. “If you were so sure it was going to be the last time, why did you go back again?”

He shrugged. “Sometimes, it’s hard to stick to your willpower. It’s like I told you—when it’s all you ever know, you just keep going back for more and more. Why wouldn’t I?”

“You keep saying that,” I said. “That it’s all you ever know.

But I thought your parents were happy. I mean, until everything went down.

But I thought...” I trailed off as I realized how the words sounded.

It reminded me of Ainsley, telling me that she always thought my family was perfect.

It was a wonder, really, what went on inside other people’s families behind closed doors.

Sebastian sighed and kicked the turf with one foot. “They haven’t been happy for years. Not since we moved from the UK. Maybe even since before then. He’s been cheating on her for at least that long.”

The words were such a shock to my system that it took me a minute to even be able to recognize them, to understand and follow through with what he just said.

“Yeah,” he said, like he could read my mind. “You heard me right.”

I floundered for words, for something to say. “Did he... Did he tell her that when he...” I didn’t want to say the words when he confessed about the affair . Even though he’d already left well over a month ago now, saying it made it feel too real.

“Oh, heck no,” Sebastian said. He ran his hands through his hair and grabbed it in fistfuls, reminding me of the way my dad always did it whenever he was fighting with my mom.

“I could just see it. The way that he would come back with his apology flowers every Friday—not that he called them apology flowers, but that’s what they were.

They were, ‘I hope you don’t know what I’m doing, but if you do, please forgive me.

’ And I don’t think she did know. I don’t know that any of the girls knew at all. ”

“But you knew,” I said softly.

He scratched his nose lightly, and said, “Yeah, well, once you start getting cheated on, you start to notice the signs in other people.”

Ice filled my veins. He’d talked about Tiffany wanting a future husband who wouldn’t care that she was cheating on him, but at the time, I hadn’t been sure if he was speaking theoretically about the cheating or if it was already happening. I guess I know now.

“Why didn’t you ever do anything? Why didn’t you confront him or tell your mom or?—”

“I couldn’t,” he said simply. He finally went to grab the soccer ball from the net, putting some distance between us.

I thought he was going to stay over there, avoid having to talk about it any more, but then he kept going.

“Being the oldest child, it’s like the third parent.

And sometimes…” He shook his head. “Sometimes, you have to do what’s right for the kids over what’s right for you. ”

“The kids,” I echoed. “You mean your sisters?”

Sebastian nodded. “I couldn’t tear their family apart by telling my mom. By forcing her to confront it. I thought it was better this way, so everything would stay normal, at least until they finished high school.”

The words were more familiar to me than I would have liked, as I thought about my parents and the way they were sticking it out.

I’d wondered, a few times, if they were just staying together until we were out of the house.

If they thought that a divorce would have less of an impact on us as adults than it would as kids.

But I hated being in that house, so full of tension all the time.

And I wondered if Sebastian felt the same.

“You really don’t think any of them knew?” I asked. “None of them felt it?”

He shook his head. “Nah. Not until Lavender confronted him.”

“Lavender? You mean, she…” I couldn’t even form the words. The very idea of being the one to find out my father was cheating on my mother made me sick, and to imagine that happening to her…

“I try not to hold it against her,” Sebastian said, his voice empty.

He dropped down to sit on the ground and I quickly followed suit, feeling like if I kept standing, I might collapse.

“That she didn’t keep it to herself, I mean.

But I spent so long trying to keep our family together—for her as well as Ainsley and Imogen and she just… threw it all away.”

My head was spinning. “She was probably doing what she thought was right.”

“I know she was,” he said. “That’s what makes it so much worse. It makes me resent her even more because now I have to wonder if she was the one who was right or if I was.”

I couldn’t even begin to imagine the weight he had felt on his shoulders for the last few years.

The pain he must have felt as he saw his dad return with those flowers week after week, knowing what they meant.

To spend so long keeping quiet, only for it to all explode in that awful fight of the summer.

“I don’t think there is a right answer here,” I said honestly. “I think you both just did the best you could with the information you had.”

Sebastian pressed his lips together but nodded.

I felt the same way I had outside the diner, where I so desperately wanted to help him, wanted to save him, but I had no idea how.

I wanted to take him away from here, away from all the bad things in life and let him live free.

But I couldn’t. And that hurt me more than anything in the world.

“Well, come on, then,” I said, getting back to my feet. I jogged over to the net to grab the soccer ball. “Why don’t we play best two out of three?”

Sure, it wasn’t a solution to anything. But as we played—me missing the ball almost every time I kicked at it and Sebastian almost tackling me every time I did get possession—I wondered if this was the closest I could give him to that little piece of paradise away from his life’s problems.