She stood with her hands on her hips, glaring at the group of teenagers with such an aggressive, terrifying, protective intensity that they immediately looked down, their faces flushing with embarrassment, and hurried off down the shoreline.

Chloe knelt in the sand beside my towel. She smiled down at me, her eyes crinkling with genuine warmth.

“Idiots,” she muttered playfully, shaking her head.

She reached into her beach tote and pulled out a bottle of high-SPF sunscreen. She squeezed a large dollop of the cool white lotion into her palms and rubbed them together to warm it.

With incredible gentleness, Chloe began to work the lotion over my back. Her hands moved with a deep, sacred reverence over the thick, raised keloids on my shoulders and spine—the exact places that had shielded her from the collapsing, burning roof fourteen years ago.

It was a deeply intimate, caring gesture, a physical apology she repeated every time we stepped into the sun. She was tending the very scars she’d once used to mock me.