Meg puts her hand over mine. “Listen, Lanie, I’m as type A as the next person at this table, but I think the message is to stop being type A about love. It’ll come, and when it does, you’ll know.”

“Is that what happened with you and Tommy?” I ask. “You really just knew?”

“Sure! And look at us now! We’re so close, we’re like brother and sister.” She cackles. “I’m ordering more Kate Mosses and nobody better stop me.”

Rufus and I nod, because no complaints here.

Minutes later, just as I’m about to shoot that inadvisable second shot of tequila, something in my periphery makes me stop. I tilt my head and feel my stomach rising to my throat, because I’m almost certain Noah Ross is walking south on Broadway. Right toward Maison Pickle.

He’s alone, in dark sunglasses, jeans, and a pea coat. His hair is damp and he looks casual without looking sloppy. He’s holding some sort of box in one hand and is certainly coming this way. A bolt of something shoots through me. Is it that lightning thing again? No, this is panic. I have approximately ninety seconds to figure out how to disappear.

A mental inventory takes place: my ratty college sweatshirt, bad hair, swollen eyes. Is it possible I look so terrible that he won’t recognize me? To be safe, I pull up the hood of my sweatshirt and grab Rufus’s sunglasses from his pile, making myself incognito.

My friends’ heads snap toward me, quizzical looks on their tipsy faces.

“Where’d you get these? They’re amazing,” I say, overdoing my enthusiasm.

“Paul Smith,” Rufus says slowly. “Remember, you were there?”

“Yes!” I lie, distracted by the advancing figure of Noah Ross. He’s walking much too quickly for a Sunday morning. “That was such a fun day. So fun.”

“Mmm-hmmm,” Rufus says suspiciously. He tries to follow my gaze from behind his shades. “Who are you hiding from?”

“No one!” I slink down in the patio chair until my nose is level with my empty prosecco glass. “I’m just . . . tired. I was up all night. You know, crying.” This is true, and yet I do a great job of making it sound like such a lie that now Meg is onto me, too. She spins around in her chair. She turns to look—I swear—right into Noah Ross’s eyes.

But just when I’m sure I’m busted, Noah swivels to the right. He opens a door and disappears inside a storefront two doors down. I let out a gigantic sigh.

Rufus snaps his fingers at me. “Begin to make sense,” he says. “Now.”

I take off Rufus’s shades and lower my hood.

“I thought I saw someone I didn’t want to see,” I say. “No big deal.”

“Who?” Meg says, still peering around.