MATT After the holidays, Grace and I spent as much time as we could together—mostly naked. It felt like we were trying to condense a whole relationship into a few short months before I left for South America. We must have told each other a million times that what we had was casual, but it didn’t feel that way. Grace avoided all conversations about what she was going to do when I left for the summer. She’d constantly reminded me that we were young, which sometimes felt like she was minimizing our relationship. I think she was trying to protect her heart. Maybe I was, too. We hung out with Tati and Brandon a lot and went to seedy music venues on the Lower East Side and in Brooklyn every Friday. On Sundays, we’d lounge around, playing games or studying together at Senior House. But as the winter ended and we headed into early spring, we all got busy preparing for the end of college and the next phase of our lives. If I hadn’t lived right next door to Grace, I don’t know how we would’ve seen each other.
