“Why do we wait so long to do this?” Eva throws her arms around my neck in the afternoon version of Vino. “You look so happy. Did you land yourself something amazing?”

Joy bubbles up in my chest like champagne bubbles. “More than one thing.”

“Sit, sit.” She gestures at the table. “I’ve already got celebratory wine. Let’s lift our glasses before you tell me the good news.”

We do, and I laugh out loud. “It’s not as good as your news. You’re killing it, Eva. And so humble too!”

She blushes. Eva, for her part, never once mentioned that she had a new release, much less that it hit the New York Times bestseller list. I found out via an ad I saw on one of my social media apps. And we even texted about this meetup fairly extensively.

“I hate saying it out loud.” She takes a sip of wine, eyes darting around as if she’s vaguely nervous that someone might approach her in Vino based on her book jacket photo. “It seems so—” She wrinkles her nose. “I don’t know. Braggy.”

“In that case, I have no good news.”

“Oh, stop. Tell me yours. Immediately. I demand it.” Her eyes sparkle in a genuine kind of way that reminds me of Summer. I’ll call her right after this. I’ll invite her to dinner. How can she refuse? She and Dayton are deep in the thick of parenthood, but everyone needs a night out once in a while. Plus, Wes and I have yet to debut our relationship to them. My heart zigs and then zags against my ribcage. It’s going to be awkward—no two ways about it. Across the table, Eva looks at me with wide, prompting eyes. What better time to practice?

“There’s...more than one thing, actually.” I sip my wine and try to look coy, but it slips down the wrong pipe. I try to clear it, but I can’t swallow it. Commence coughing fit. “There’s—” More coughing.

“You okay?” Eva’s brows are knitted together with concern, but her mouth is quirked, like she knows in her soul that I’m not really choking on wine. “It’s okay if you’d rather keep it to yourself.”

It makes me laugh, which brings on more coughing. She’s doing her best to keep from laughing, one hand over her mouth, but there’s a light in her eyes like there used to be in high school, when we spent all our time backstage whispering naughty jokes and generally being nerds.

“Not funny,” I wheeze.

Eva arranges her face into something resembling seriousness and waits while I catch my breath.

“Should we consider this a sign that your good news is meant to be secret?”

“Please. You’re the one who hides all your accolades.” I bravely lift the wine glass to my lips and take another sip. “If I were you, I’d take out a billboard. Do something crazy.”

“That’s your thing. Doing something crazy just for the hell of it.” She’s right, but a little spark of pain shivers through the center of my heart. I dismiss it, like I always do. “Now, tell me your news before we get old.”

“I got a role.” I watch her face as it sinks in. God, she’s genuine. The joy lighting up her expression doesn’t hold a hint of jealousy. “It’s off-Broadway, but that’s okay, because I think a Broadway show might be too demanding for my new boyfriend.”

“What?” Reserved, adult Eva slaps her hand down on the surface of the table. “Good God. Why didn’t you lead with that? Who is it? Who? I want names.”

“That’s the crazy part.” I feel breathless to speak this out loud. “It’s Wes.”

“Roommate Wes?”

“The very same one.”

She blinks at me, wordless.

“I know. It makes...little to no sense.” I take a sip of my wine, successfully this time, and relish the bubbly heat of it as it slips down my throat. “He is not my type. Not in any way, shape, or form.”

“Oh, stop.” Eva waves a hand in the air. “I saw the picture. At the very least, he’d be any woman’s type in form.”

It makes me laugh. It borders on a giggle, and that’s a little much, so I pull it back. “That’s right—you called him sexy man meat the last time you were here. I’ve come to discover that it’s a very accurate description.”

“So what’s the hang-up?”

I shrug my shoulders, gazing into the space between us, visions of Wes’s naked, muscled body dancing like perverted sugarplums in my head. “I’m not sure that it’s a hang-up, so much as it’s—”

I’m lost for words, because my dirty thoughts have slipped down to the V at that hard lower edge of his abs. Bring it back, Whit. Back to your longtime friend who has graciously met you at Vino for a girls’ evening out in the middle of the most hectic scheduling of your entire life. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s an ‘opposites attract’ kind of thing. I’ve learned a hell of a lot more about him than I knew before.”

“As in, he’s not just a one-dimensional asshole?”

That side of Wes had softened, the rough, defensive edges of him smoothing. Slightly. “He can still be an asshole. Everyone can be an asshole sometimes.” It flashes up into my memory then, as clearly as if it were yesterday, shouting at my father and storming away. I can feel the shape of the words in my mouth. I swallow more wine to chase them away. “He likes to be in control.”

Eva frowns. “How controlling? Be honest with me.” I can see the concern lighting like a signal fire in her face.

“No, not like that. Not like that. He just—he has a plan, and he likes to stick to it. He’s not the kind of guy who thrives on surprises.”

“Oooh.” She murmurs the word into her wine glass, one eyebrow arched. “And this is fireworks instead of fizzle?”

“He takes me from day to night.”

“Seductive. But how does he...live with you?” Eva guffaws, a completely unladylike sound. “How does he stand it? I mean that in the nicest way possible.”

“I’ve grown out of my former erratic ways. I’ve got a job. Two jobs. And. I keep the spontaneous road trips under control. I’ve only woken him up early on the weekend once.”

“Yes, that all sounds incredibly tame. I’m sure he’ll love those late nights at the theater.”

“Hey, bitch, I say this fondly, but are you trying to rain on my parade?”

Eva laughs until tears gather at the corners of her eyes. “No! No. I’m sorry. It’s a terrible habit. I spend too much time writing about people and not enough time drinking with them. Clearly. It makes me morbidly curious.”

“I’d be curious too. Have you seen my boyfriend?”

We laugh for another hour, until the wine has gone thoroughly to my head.

In my head, I’m in the middle of a breakup scene. In reality, I’m trying to sell a man insurance.

It’s not going well.

“This isn’t going to work for us,” I hear myself saying, and sit upright with a jolt. Hollywood’s Man of the Year looks disapprovingly down at me from his perch on my cubicle wall.

“What? What did you say?”

“I’m sorry, sir.” I cover smoothly, because at least the silver lining of acting is that you can course correct on the fly. “I want to make sure this works for you. Do you have any other policies you’d like to bundle along with your life insurance policy? We also offer homeowners insurance. It could be available to you for a monthly rate of $106.40.”

There’s a beat when I brace myself for an unceremonious click on the other end of the line. I really have to focus. But it’s hard, because the evenings are stuffed full of rehearsals. I’ve even got them jammed into my lunch break. Fittings. Solo rehearsals with a voice coach. I love it, but it’s added a level of swirling storm to my life that I didn’t anticipate.

Kind of like Wes.

“Sure,” says the man on the other end of the line, and my thoughts have wandered so far to Wes’s body, to the heated look in his eyes when we kiss—when we do more than kiss—that, for a split second, I don’t know what he’s talking about.

“Wonderful. That’s wonderful.” I sell him on an auto policy too.

Disaster averted.

But it leaves me shaken, somehow off-balance in a way I don’t like.

I know what the cure to that is.

Today my lunch break is only a lunch break. No plans, no fittings, no rehearsals. May has turned over into June and I step out into the sunlight, my phone already warm in my hand. It’s five minutes after twelve when I dial Summer’s number.

She picks up on the first ring. “Oh, my God, it’s you! I miss you!”

Her words are muffled behind food, but the happiness is unmistakable.

“What’s for lunch?”

“A pita from the place down the street.” She laughs. “I’m outside on a park bench. What are you eating?”

“I’m going to that gyro cart on the corner by my office. Twins!”

“See? I knew we’d still be linked at the mind even when I moved out.”

“Then you should guess what I’m going to say next.”

“Let me think.” Summer graces me with the sound of her chewing and swallowing another bite of pita. “You’re going to somehow shake up my life as I know it.”

I was going to say we should make lunch plans for next week, but the moment the words are out of my mouth, all the pieces fall into places. I’ve been wanting to have Summer and Dayton over for dinners. I’ve been wanting to make this thing with me and Wes real. I want to burst that bubble between the dreamy beginnings of a relationship, when it’s still a secret that nobody knows, and light it up with the world’s best spotlight. I’m tired of hiding us in the dark, damn it.

“Of course I am. Find a babysitter, because you’re coming to dinner.”

“What?” Summer says around another mouthful of pita, and my stomach growls at the frankly disgusting sound. I can’t help it. I’m starving. “Tonight?”

“Yes. It’s past time that you visited the old stomping grounds, and we need to reconnect on a spiritual level.”

I love to hear her laugh. “A spiritual level? Does that mean I need to bring dessert?”

“You know that’s what it means. You must bring the best dessert you can rustle up on short notice.”

“I don’t know,” she frets. “It is short notice. What if I can’t find—”

“You will find a sitter. I can sense it,” I intone, and Summer laughs again. “This is the spontaneity of life. This is what we have to do in order to keep things fresh and fun. If we don’t have unexpected dinners every now and again, what’s the point of living?”

There’s an ache at the center of my chest that I can’t name, but the excitement of making plans with Summer soothes it, lets it fall back to the depths where it belongs.

“What’s the point?” she cries. “Get your lunch. I’ve got to connect with my babysitter. Do you have any other breaking news?”

The urge to tell her right now, to get it out into the open, is so strong it feels like vertigo. I open my mouth. “No. Nothing at all. See you tonight at seven. Love you.”

“Love youuuuu.” She disconnects the call in the middle of her profession of affection and I pick up the pace a second time. I could call Wes and let him know...but no. I slip my phone into my purse. It’ll be a nice surprise.

I sweep into the apartment on an early summer breeze, my arms laden with bags, and sing Wes’s name. He appears from the kitchen, wiping his mouth.

“What’s all that?”

“Dinner. We’re having a little party.”

I wait for the corner of his mouth to turn up in the little smile that says, Whitney, I think you’re amazing, and now you have made me see that life is about the last-minute plans we make to ensure a bit of spontaneity in our lives.

“I already ate.”

It sends a frisson of cold through my heart, but I ignore it, brushing past him into the kitchen and letting the bags land heavily on the counter. “No big. It’s not until seven, and you’re going to love who’s coming.”

“Who did you invite?” Wes stands in the doorway, not breaching the line between the hall and the kitchen, and stuffs his hands into his pockets.

“My best friend in the world, Summer Sullivan. And your best friend in the world, Dayton Nash.”

“Okay,” he says flatly, and I want to die a little. “That could be a little awkward. Pretending we’re not—you know. Giving this a try.”

“Why would we do that?” I keep myself moving, keep putting things into the fridge. I have a recipe for a chicken pot pie bake that everyone’s going to love. It’s just the kind of thing to sit at the center of a bunch of laughing, happy friends. Only Wes’s eyes are wary and cold. “You don’t think we should tell them?”

“I think we should take five seconds and plan it out together before we jump in with both feet.”

He’s pissed.

I feel myself stiffen, feel myself get ready to shoot his anger right back at him, but I look at his shoulders, tensed beneath his shirt, and I don’t. I do the opposite.

I go to him. I take his hands. I press his knuckles to my lips.

And then I lick the ridge of his middle finger.

He jerks his hand back with a laugh. “What the fuck, Whit?”

“I should have asked you. I thought it was a nice surprise.”

He looks off to the side, his gaze going a little harder. “Don’t blindside me with my sister.”

I slink closer, pressing my hip against his, forcing myself into the crook of his arm. It takes him a moment, but he relaxes. “Can I blindside you with chicken pot pie bake?” I lower my voice, putting all the sexy vibes I can into my tone. Honestly, I overshoot it a little. “Can I blindside you with my luscious body?”

“You? Blindside me?” He’s absolutely still for a moment, and then he sweeps me into his arms, so abruptly I let out a surprised squeak. “No. I’m taking over.”

He so, so does.