“I’ll die without you.” Everest flops down dramatically on the sofa, keeping her wine glass upright.

“You’re going to be fine. Don’t you start your new job on Monday?” It’s Saturday. Tomorrow, I leave for New York City. Graham is already there, overseeing the finishing touches on the property of his we’ll be living in.

Together.

I’m going to be living in a billionaire’s penthouse because the President of the United States needs me to.

I shake my head to clear it of that little obsession.

“Tuesday.” She doesn’t raise her head from the throw pillow. “I don’t know why it’s not Monday. There’s no holiday. But what does it matter?” She shrugs one shoulder, but can’t keep the smile off her face. “This is my life now. A cold, lonely existence without you, rattling around this apartment like a ghost from the—”

I give her a halfhearted slap on the shoulder. “Jesus, Evie. You’re killing me.”

She sits up and pauses the movie we’ve been watching on Netflix. Legally Blonde is our guilty pleasure. “Bellamy.” Her tone shifts abruptly, and I sigh. “Do not sigh at me. This is important.”

“We’ve been through this—”

“Are you sure?”

“About which thing?”

She faces me head-on, tucking her feet beneath her. “About this frankly insane plan to move to New York City with your whirlwind boyfriend.”

Guilt flashes through my chest like a thunderstorm. There are three people on the planet who know my relationship with Graham isn’t real, and Everest isn’t one of them. It kills me that I can’t tell her, but there’s too much risk.

It would feel like a betrayal to Graham.

“I’m sure, Evie. The job market here—” I wave a hand in the air, as if the job market is the sum total of the reasons I’m hightailing it out of town with only two weeks’ notice. “Nobody wants to hire me here.”

“That’s not true.” Her voice is fiery, and she gestures toward me with her wine hand, making the red slosh in the glass. “You are gorgeous. You are brilliant. You just haven’t applied at the right firm yet.”

Because I am wine-drunk and already missing her, I laugh. “I’ve had ten interviews.”

“What if the eleventh one’s the charm?”

“Then it’ll have to be in New York City.” I drain the rest of my glass, the pleasant heat spreading outward from the center of my belly. “That wouldn’t be so bad. Somewhere high-profile, in a city like that? It would only take me a few years.”

Everest’s voice is soft. “Your plan?”

“Yeah.”

She shifts on the couch, propping one elbow on the back. “Have you told him yet?”

“Graham?”

“No.”

There’s a silence into which any other friend would say, “you have to tell him” or “she’s your mother” or “isn’t this the kind of thing a partner should know?” But Evie is my best friend in the world, and she knows better than that. It’s a comfortable silence, even though the memories flashing through my head are not fucking comfortable.

“What are we going to do?” Evie stands up from the couch, tone brisk, and bends her knees a few times on the plush rug we found at a Costco in her hometown. “We can’t just sit here and watch movies and drink wine all night. It’s your last night.”

“Don’t say it like that. It’s so morbid.” I frown at her. “Anyway, my wine is empty.” I don’t want to tell her that this might not be my last night in our apartment after all. I can’t tell her.

“We should leave.”

“We should stay.”

“You don’t want to get fancied up and go out? One last time?”

“For God’s sake, Evie, this is not the last time we’re going to have fun together. Are you kidding? There’s—” A lump sticks in my throat and I swallow it down. “The city is so close. You have to visit me on the weekends. And then there’ll be the bachelorette party—”

Evie lets out a whoop. “How did I forget about the bachelorette party? God, I’m going to have to get my shit together if I’m going to plan a good one.”

I laugh out loud. “I’m so blessed to have you as my maid of honor.”

She waves a hand in the air. “Let’s dispense with the formalities. You don’t have to beg me on bended knee, or anything like that—”

“Uh, I would never.”

“I’m saying you don’t have to.” It’s her turn to laugh, her voice velvet around the wine, and my heart aches. I’m going to miss living with Everest. We’ve had a good thing going since the last year of undergrad.

I’m going to miss living with her, and there’s the constant pressure of being so close to Graham. He promised me separate rooms. Separate master suites, even. But he’ll be in the apartment all night and whenever he has days off, breathing the same air, taking off his suit jacket, rolling up his sleeves.

“You’ve gone red,” breaks in Evie. “What are you thinking about? Lover boy?”

“Don’t call him that. And yes.”

The honesty comes easy with her.

“What do you think you’ll do the first night in the house?”

“Sleep,” I tell her coyly.

“You are the worst.” Evie paces toward the front door.

“I’m the best, and you love me. Don’t forget, I’m paying the rent for the rest of the year, just so you can keep my room as a shrine.” Technically, Graham is paying the rent, but that’s another kindness I’d rather not think about.

Evie grins, looking down into her wine glass. “Refill?”

“Yes.”

“Movie?”

“Yes.”

“Compromise—we order in Chinese.”

“I wasn’t going to go out anyway, but you win. We’ll get Chinese.”

Evie gets a running start on the way back to the couch and bounces once before she connects, somehow digging her phone out of the cushion at the same time. “Your treat, right? You are the one leaving me behind.”