Benny dashes out of the suite, and Xavier makes his way back to his room to get dressed—most likely throwing on whatever shirt is lying around and making it look New York Fashion Week runway-level effortless—leaving Jack standing alone in the hallway just outside my room.

“Hey,” I say softly.

“Happy birthday,” he says, his voice buttery and rich, making me shiver. He stands in my doorway, propping himself casually against the frame. “Nice room. Who’s Tim?”

I turn toward the Once Upon a Tim sign above my bed. I never did get around to peeling it off, but I kind of like it.

Should I be a little bold and say, “Why? Jealous?” or should I shrug it off and leave him to wonder about the mystery of Tim?

But I don’t get a chance because Jack talks first. “I got you something.” He hands me a rectangular package shoddily wrapped in a plastic bag from the CIA bookstore.

“Should I open it now?”

“Sure,” he says. “If you want.”

I sit at my desk and delicately unwrap the white plastic. I pull out a picture frame with Cayuga Institute of the Arts up and down its plastic border.

“Sorry, it’s all they had in the bookstore.”

But I’m not listening to him. The frame doesn’t matter. Inside is a painting Jack took from The Art of Crumbs. It’s one I know well because it’s early concept art from my favorite scene in the movie, where the witch sings a “Defying Gravity”–style song. The sprawling painting, almost abstract in its brush strokes, shows the two faces of the witch. Her shadow is cast against the ground from bolts of jagged lightning.

It would be enough that Jack chose this picture to share with me, that he thought I would love it, but overlaid on top of the picture is a poem I don’t recognize.

LICHTENBERG FIGURES, YOU

Trees shed leaves

the way I shed faces,

collectively

holding our breaths

until we can flower

once harsher weather

ebbs.

The last leaf

clings to its limb,

to seasons gone,

the way I cling to a mask

that no longer fits.

Maybe it never did.

Naked trunks sprout

from scorched earth

branches feather out like

jagged bolts of

lightning

waiting for the rain

to learn how to breathe again.

I point to it. “Did you write this?”

Jack nods. “I saw that picture in the book and, I don’t know, it inspired me and reminded me of you and that night after the Years & Years show. I know it was probably nothing to you, but those kinds of nights don’t happen to me often. Or … ever.”

“Small moments last,” I say.

He nods and smiles. “I hope you like it.”

A tear rolls down my hot cheek, and I turn quickly to wipe it away. I pick my head up, and he’s looking away, purposely avoiding me. Then he turns to meet me, and it’s sheepish with a hint of a smile, and I’m about to say something when Benny bursts through the suite door with Rae and Harry pulling up his rear.