'Just in case.' I hated that phrase because I always seemed to be on the wrong side of it; too much or not enough. Too much luggage; not enough clothes. Too much water; not enough sunscreen. Too many condoms; not enough time. So for the last few weeks of my freshman year at college, I'd decided to abandon the phrase and just go without, which at the time had been incredibly cool and seemed to work in my favor.

But now, standing at the train station, waiting for Derek under the scorching summer sun, forgetting the words 'just in case' was starting to feel like it was on the wronger side of wrong; as I should have anticipated, Derek's train was late.

I paced for a while, my steps falling unevenly, my heart pounding. I was nervous, and not unduly so: it had been months since I'd last seen Derek – since February, in fact, and it was now June. The both of us had been busy during Spring Break, and he had harangued me extensively over the phone about not getting too drunk, not getting too high, not making mistakes.

I'd done just fine with that, thank you.

Eventually, the train showed up, and my body froze with suspense as I watched the large, lugubrious machine come to an obscenely drawn-out stop. I watched as the doors of each car opened, releasing floods of people – where was he? Where the hell was my boyfriend?

Derek and I had been dating for three years, and still, somehow, we were as madly in love with one another as we had been when the whole thing had begun. I tended to blame it on myself; in the beginning, I had been unjustifiably stubborn to accept the fact that I'd wanted to be with him. It had taken me several months before I even allowed myself to consider it…but that was all water under the bridge now. Still scanning the hordes of people and coming up short, I began to worry. Had he missed his own goddamn train? What the hell would I do?

"Carson!"

Fuck, I knew that voice! I looked up, hunting for the familiar tan skin and dark hair. And then there he was, a few feet in front of me. No wonder I'd missed him: he looked different.

"Hey!" He rushed forward and flung himself at me, picking me up and spinning me. "I've missed you!"

"I've missed you too," I breathed, feeling as though that wasn't enough to explain it. For the last four months, I'd pined for him aggressively – so much so that my roommates back at U-Mass had seriously considered calling 911. But now, looking at him, I had to admit to myself that New York had changed him almost beyond the point of recognition. He'd grown out his russet hair, which subsequently was beginning to curl a tiny bit at the ends. He seemed impossibly taller – at the age of twenty, I thought that he should've stopped growing by now. He also seemed to have put on a smidgen of weight, which unlike me, he could afford to do. But still, there were his brilliant, toffee eyes; his melty, coffee-colored skin; that characteristic Greek nose that I adored. He was obviously still my Derek.

I insisted on helping him carry his shit from the station to my newly acquired car (a shiny – if not well-loved – yellow Mazda), and only succeeded in my assertion once I'd wrenched his duffel bag from his hand, leaving him to man the other two bags.

As it turned out, I'd only kind of won, the victim of a forced compromise: he'd let me take the lightest of all the cargo. I shoved everything into the back seat and watched with a great deal of satisfaction as Derek climbed awkwardly into my sunny little Mazda; it had been a hanging debt of mine that, before we'd begun dating (and well afterward) Derek had been my main means of transportation.

My Massachusetts license plate barely stood out amongst the rest, as Warren Bay was a town of heavy tourist population. This was where they lived though; the real to-do was always in Carrington, the next town over – the town of my adolescence.

"I can't believe you bought a Mazda," Derek said in disgust as we drove down the unchanged roads. "You know," he warned me, "they fall apart easily."

"Good thing I have a strong, handsome mechanic at my every beck and call," I teased him. Derek was going to school in New York for pre-med – an odd and unexpected decision from the A-class slacker – but cars were a kind of hobby of his; the legend went that he had picked it up from a roommate at NYU, and had fallen in love ever since.

After that, I'd basked in the smell of exhaust and oil that clung to his clothes every time he'd come home or to Boston to visit me.

"Yeah well…" he began flatly, failing to hide the reciprocated playfulness, "don't get so used to it. When I'm a doctor or a psychiatrist or something, I won't be around to fix your damn foreign cars all the time." He smiled at me lovingly.

"Fine," I said breezily, "I'll hire a mechanic and I'll have an affair."

"Don't test me," he said. "I'm fucking beat."

"Sorry," I apologized. "I love you, and only you – you know that."

He grinned. "Yeah, I definitely know that."

We arrived at our neighboring houses only to find our parents sitting together on Derek's father's deck, grill going strong and Allan – Derek's father – in full barbeque regalia. My mother sat at the picnic table on the porch, sipping pink lemonade and reading last week's paper, if only to force herself to look casual instead of bursting at the seams.

College, for all that it tore most kids away from their parents, had actually cemented my once tattered relationship with my mother. Of course, I'd freaked when she'd told me that she and Allan had begun dating – hello, my mom? His dad? But hey, I guess if you're going to go weird, you might as well go all the way.

Once she'd pretended to notice us (how the hell do you miss a fucking yellow Mazda?), my mother jumped up and ran down to meet the two of us. "You're back! Allan," she cried, turning to him, "they're back!"

"I see," he chuckled, spatula twirling in his hand. The over-dramatics were just another point of interest to Allan – the same thing that had been a repellent in my father's eyes.

My mother, Angel Cassimov (neé Bartholomew) had divorced my father, Terrance Cassimov because of what the two of them labeled "irreconcilable differences' – it was, in all honesty, just that they had become sick of each other. And to me, that was a perfectly plausible thing, even if it happened after fifteen years…or maybe that was why it had happened.

In any case, it was a much less devastating story than Allan's. Shortly after I'd moved next door to Derek and his family, his mother, Sirena, had been diagnosed with cancer…and later that summer, she had died. Having experienced that, I'd come to the conclusion that my parents' divorce wasn't all that painful for me, after the initial separation.

But, if you don't already know the full extent of that story, you probably don't belong in this one.