I wove my way through the cluster of guests, smiling and nodding at people as I tried not to spill on anyone while also moving as fast as I could in a dimly lit restaurant. By the time I made it past the host’s desk up front, Franny was long gone, and I braced myself for the disappointment to come. I pushed the glass door open and stepped out onto the sidewalk.

And there, under the streetlight, she stood, facing away from me, bouncing on her toes. I took a few steps closer, and I could hear her talking. For a second, I thought she might be on her phone, but then I realized she seemed to be talking to herself.

“Franny?” I said tentatively, still unsure of what she was doing.

She whipped around, her mouth wide-open. “Oh my god,” she said when she saw me, and her face looked slightly horrified. “Did you just hear what I was saying?”

“No,” I said, and seeing her again this close made it hard for my brain to form actual words. “Hi.”

“Hi.” She exhaled, and then said in a wobbly voice, “I’m just going to go for it.”

Her hands were clenched at her sides in fists, and she looked me directly in the eye.

“I’m sorry,” she said, with a tilt of her chin. “I’m so sorry. What you did for me when my mom had her heart attack—taking me to the hospital to be with her when you had so much going on—it was so nice of you, and instead of saying thank you, I lashed out at you and said a lot of things I didn’t mean.”

I cleared my throat, ran a hand across the back of my neck. I searched my head for words but found nothing.

“Look,” she said, moving her hands to hold them together in front of her chest. “I was really scared, about…honestly, about everything. My mom, and finding my sister, and losing my birth dad, and starting my own business, and my feelings for you. I really let all that crap get in the way of so much stuff, and I’m trying very hard not to do that again. Also, it was so shitty of me not to respond to your messages. I have no excuse, other than I was just scared and a shithead.”

“You’re not a shithead,” I said, trying to follow along with the words firing out of her mouth at rapid speed.

“Occasionally, I can be a shithead,” she said, and I let out a small chuckle at this, because it was so purely Franny, and, god, how I missed her.

“So,” she said, blowing out a sigh, “I’m just going to say it. I love you. I’m in love with you.”

The words sprang out into the air, wrapped themselves around me, made it so I couldn’t move.