In all the years that they grew together, Adele never envisioned that one day she’d wake up and feel sick just by looking at him. Before they were together, she’d lie in her bed at night dreaming of his face: the straightness of his nose, the way his icy eyes could warm her with just a glance in her direction, the stone-stiffness of his set jaw, outlining the man’s face it would soon become.

The day he told her that he thought she was beautiful, she swore her heart, no, time stopped in the minutes it took her to comprehend his words. She’d been called beautiful before—her whole life—but never by the boy she liked this intensely, and that was probably because she never really liked anyone before, at least not like that. She found boys to be brutish. She once resolved not to have anything to do with them until she was in college, and now, lying on the cold tile floor of her bathroom, looking at the cloudless blue sky through the skylight, it almost made her laugh through her tears—how young she was to think that they’d be more mature and attuned to her interests in college.

Come to think of it, Adele wasn’t entirely sure that she had actually liked Mark when she first made the proclamation at a slumber party full of girls she only marginally liked. She remembered pining after a different boy since childhood and was finding it to be quite old hat, so when the group of fleece-wearing girls turned to her and demanded to know who her crush was, she just blurted out the first nice boy that came to mind: Mark Rudinsky, skateboarder extraordinaire.

The girls all hemmed and hawed at the thought of her—not popular, but not unpopular per se, always needing to be contrary in some way—with the one of the dreamboats of the ninth grade. Even Samantha said she thought she’d get him first, long before Adele could ever have the chance to see what his hair felt like. So she decided to prove them wrong. Her father always said never to challenge a DuBois, and she was no exception.

She set her sights on him, making it known to the other girls in her class that he would be hers, and gradually, she found herself actually pining after him so much so that she’d lie in her bed dreaming of him. And when he finally told her he liked her, she felt triumphant. After their first kiss behind the bleachers during halftime at one of his soccer games, she wrote his name all over her notebooks. She fought off sleeping at night so she could forcibly dream about him, endlessly replaying that kiss—the way he grabbed her shoulders and stroked her hair, the way he looked at her afterward, wide-eyed, disbelieving that he actually had the gall to do it, and the way he tried to casually walk away from her even though he was visibly shaking—and then she imagined more. She imagined going on dates, making out in the back of the movie theatre, skinny dipping in the reservoir, exploring each other’s bodies, falling in love, getting married, having children, getting old, dying together, hand-in-hand like Noah and Allie in The Notebook.

She had their whole life charted before their first date. That wasn’t unusual for Adele. She knew what she wanted and how she wanted it and always charged forward, full steam ahead, hard-headed and hard-hearted until she achieved her goals. She never considered that falling in love should be any different, a foolhardy lack of consideration on her part. She never thought she’d change her mind once it was set.

She had been lying on the floor in the bathroom for over an hour thinking hard about her life and her choices. She bent her knees and put her feet on the floor. She put the back of her hand over her eyes and the clenched her other fist on her stomach. She half-sobbed, half-laughed at her own stubbornness and youthful confidence.

Throughout their relationship, there were people she considered to be naysayers rather than sages. People who told her that high school romances rarely last. People who told her that by twenty-five, she will be so incredibly changed from the girl she once was that she may not even recognize herself, that she may not like the same things or people. She just thought they didn’t understand the connection and love that she and Mark shared. She believed in her heart that her sensibilities were so iron-clad that nothing could ever change them. But then again, she didn’t have any experiences under her belt ant she certainly never felt that all-encompassing, life-changing love for a man yet, though she thought this first love was that last love.

Things started unraveling in college. During their sophomore year, rumors spread like wildfire that he cheated on her. He pleaded in her dorm room for her to believe him, that the rumors held no salt, that they were the ravings of a jealous girl and her friends. Adele had been hurt, hit hard in the center of her chest at the force of the accusations, but she believed him. She told herself that it was the love and trust they built and not the fear of being alone that helped her believe.

Then he went on an impromptu ski trip with the alleged jealous girl and her friends while she was studying abroad, never bothering to return her calls even though he knew it cost her a pretty penny to call. She ended up calling her mother, sobbing hysterically while wandering the streets of Barcelona, holding hands with her friend, making her mother feel helpless all those miles away. When she finally got ahold of him days later, he apologized, making the excuse that he didn’t have service and of course he wasn’t ignoring her. All was forgotten.

Then he went to her dorm room and told her that he needed a break. She made a fool of herself. She screamed. She stood between him and the door, refusing to let him leave, begging. They were both so surprised when he shoved her into the wall, gripping her arms tightly, looking into her eyes in a crazy way that scared her so fiercely that he gave up. He completely dropped it. He stayed. All was forgotten.

Adele curled up into a ball on the floor of the bathroom, now warm from her body heat and the midday sun. She didn’t know how long she laid on the floor and shuddered at that memory, so repressed that the look in his ice-blue eyes, once so warm and suddenly so bleak, frightened her all over again.

During their senior year, she lived in an apartment with Mark and two friends. By then, they were prone to explosively silent fights and she had become something of a wretch in the eyes of their friends. They all much preferred the Adele she was without him, sunny and smiling, to the bitter and seething girl she was when they were together. She told herself they were just hitting some bumps in the road and that it would get better.

Then one night after they were all out drinking at their favorite bar, the group started to dissipate, couples drifting off together to hook up, singles looking to cause some mischief in the early morning hours. It had started to rain and Adele suddenly felt bogged down in exhaustion. She asked Mark if they could go home and he said she had to go by herself because he was going to stay out. She begged, this time in front of his less-savory friends, but he was so steadfast in his plans to go to a sorority that he’d never been to before that he didn’t care that his girlfriend would be walking alone in the darkness that was their small college town for nearly two miles. In the rain. He didn’t care.

She hugged her arms around herself as she walked home, trying to keep alert through the fogginess of her drunkenness, exhaustion, and sorrow, but that only scared her. She was hysterical after a while and called her roommate to get her, waking her up and feeling deep shame. She was as wet as a drowned rat by the time she got home. Her roommate drew her a hot bath and told her to lock the bedroom door that night. She didn’t. he came home in the morning stinking of booze and weed and wrapped his arms around her, whispering a feeble sorry in her ear. All was forgotten.

Until now. All these little masques were finally fitting together and she was facing it, here in the bathroom, unable to pick herself up off the floor because that would mean action.

His behavior didn’t change or get better after college. He still treated her like a throwaway and she guessed she just assumed that’s what their brand of love was. She just assumed that’s what it was supposed to be like.

Until she met Brad, an Irish export at her summer internship after college. They became fast friends, and the easiness of their friendship astonished her. She hadn’t yet made any friends without Mark and she was surprised when proper actually liked her for her.

So when Brad went back to Ireland and later invited her and Mark to visit for two weeks, she took him up on the offer and had to present a whining Mark with an ultimatum that she was going with or without him. He went. He had a habit of following her.

She loved Ireland. She loved the people, the weather, the countryside, the cities, the animals, the history, the culture, even the air. And something happened. Brad would lead them around Dublin and throw his arm around her shoulders or waist. Mark never noticed. Brad grabbed her hand, gripping it easily, swinging it to the rhythm of his gait. Mark didn’t care. Brad pulled her in for intimate hugs at museums, in shops, at street corners, in bars. Mark didn’t object. Brad sat close to her on the couch, keeping her body in the crook of his arm while they chatted or watched television. Mark stared at his phone.

She felt good and she felt bad. She wasn’t exactly attracted to Brad in that way. She wasn’t about to try anything and he wasn’t either, but she found herself yearning for his comforting touch and wondering if that’s how it should really feel between her and Mark.

When the returned from Ireland, they were changed—she was changed. She thought about Brad’s little touches, his one-off compliments that caught her off-guard, the way he looked out for her. She thought about the way he admired her, the way his friends admired her, and realized something was missing. She knew that her relationship with Brad would forever be strictly platonic, but she also knew she deserved adoration from her partner.

Mark wasn’t any different. No, he was worse. He acted like a boy—obsessed with video games and his buddies. He treated her like a friend with benefits.

She had woken up that morning and looked at his peacefully sleeping face and felt disgusted. When he wok e up and wished her a good morning, she was irritated by the sound of his voice. Before he left for work, he came up behind her and held her tightly, breathing on her neck in his way of telling her that he was thirsty for something later.

He left and she ran to the bathroom, making it just in time to retch up her breakfast and parts of her dinner she ate alone while he was out the night before. She flushed the toilet and lay on her back, thinking about her past.  Wondering about her future. Finally knowing her next step.