Meredith rubs sleep crust out of her eyes, completely unperturbed. “You’re lying to Jack for Jack?”

“You don’t understand because you’ve never had to deal with failure”—Meredith scoffs; I politely ignore her—“but Jack is taking a huge risk in opening this bakery. And what are you even suggesting I do, exactly? Confess my love to Jack?”

“Yes,” Meredith says, straight-faced. “That is literally exactly what I’m telling you to do.”

“I can’t! It’s ridiculous! You can’t be in love with someone you’ve known for a total of”—I count it out on my fingers, because it’s three in the morning, and my brain is now nothing more than a few pulverized brain cells. “Seven days? You can’t be in love with someone you’ve known for what amounts to a single week!”

“Says who?” Meredith, who’s spent the last seven years studying the law, who loves rules and guidelines and meticulous plans almost as much as I do, has clearly lost her mind.

“Says everyone. You know who falls in love that fast? Teenagers. Like Romeo and Juliet. And look how that ended up.”

“I don’t know, they banged at some point, so it wasn’t all bad.”

“I don’t want to end up drinking poison over Jack’s not-actually-dead body, Meredith!”

“Interesting that you cast yourself as Romeo in this scenario,” she calmly observes. “Are you spiraling right now? You sound like you’re spiraling.”

“Of course I’m spiraling! I’m in love with a woman I’ve only known for seven days!”

Because I am.

I shouldn’t be.

It isn’t logical.

I fell in love with her over the course of a single day, and I never quite fell out of love with her, and here I am, kissing her in bathrooms and screwing up her entire life. “What’s wrong with me, Mere?”

Meredith takes a slow, deep breath, probably contemplating the myriad ways to answer that question. You’re a failure and you’re a bad person both come to mind.

You’re a frozen burrito.

Or, You have untreated generalized anxiety disorder and should probably be on meds.

Or, You let your mom walk all over you.

What Meredith actually says is, “What if there’s nothing wrong with you at all?”

“Seems fake but explain.”

Meredith juts out her jaw. “Look. The last year has been absolute shit. You got fired from your dream job, your mom has been particularly leechlike, and you’ve stagnated. So when this opportunity fell into your lap, I thought, here’s a chance for you to make some money, and maybe Andrew can finally help you forget about the girl who broke your heart last Christmas. But what happened instead?”

Meredith pauses meaningfully.

“Do you want me to answer, or—?”