“It sounds like a rumor. But it scared me—” almost as much as this word vomit confession is scaring me “—so if I seem more serious, it’s because I am. I will compromise, direct a musical, and put our history aside for the duration of our truce.”

“Shit,” Reid repeats. “Sorry. I wasn’t expecting that.”

“I know. The stakes already felt high,” I say.

“Uncle Aaron can’t seriously be on the chopping block,” Reid says.

“I don’t know. But if he is, it’s my fault, so we have to do this right, Reid. We need to be codirectors.”

“We will.”

I believe him.

“A weird note to end on, but we should—”

Reid cuts me off. “Yeah. Goodnight, Natalie.”

“Night.”

I hang up, this time for real.

But sleep is impossible—my mind is racing, this entire week of conversations on a loop. Tonight’s collaboration. Last week’s gushing over the magic of The Lion King. Tonight’s two a.m. confession. There is one line I’m stuck on.

I wasn’t expecting that.

So what did Reid expect me to say when he asked what changed?

I don’t know.

I do know it’s a relief—sharing the weight of the stakes with someone else.

Even if that someone is Reid.

The next day is the most Monday.

The highlight of my morning? Mrs. Westfield is out, so we watch Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby in AP Language. I take it as a cue to catch up on some sleep before my psych quiz and feel zero percent guilty that I don’t even make it to Gatsby’s first party before my eyes close.

“Natalie,” Fitz says with a gentle shoulder nudge.

My eyes snap open. Class is over. “Thanks.”

In the hallway after, Fitz is on a mission.

“I saw Reid overfill his water bottle,” Fitz says. “His eye bags have bags too.”

“Okay,” I say.

It’s not that I’m not going to tell Fitz about last night. I will. Once I figure out how. Because Reid and I FaceTimed until two a.m. is a sentence that is still impossible to process. Fitz will overanalyze. Convince me it means something. And it doesn’t.

We turn the corner, making our way toward the stairs up to the social sciences classrooms, when I see Henry approaching us from the other end of the hallway. He’s supposed to be heading to AP Spanish with Danica. This route is out of his way. Fitz and I look at each other, like, Is he trying to intercept us?

No way. We are not having this conversation at school.

Luckily, Fitz agrees.

She grabs my hand and we dip into the girl’s bathroom.

“Not to be basic,” Fitz says, reapplying her lipstick in the mirror. “But I still just cannot.”