The force of feelings hit me like a train. I don’t want friends. I want to kiss that white scar. I want to be the person standing at Jack’s side. I want to be the person who celebrates with her after everyone else goes home, a bottle of wine for just the two of us, toasting her, whispering, You did it, I knew you could. I want to be Jack’s arms and her everything else, to be there for all the seasons, and the past seven weeks have done nothing to dull the intense certainty of these feelings. I want her so badly, it pins me in place by the door. It’s the ache, in my heart, in my stomach, between my legs, but it’s not an ache of loneliness. It’s the ache of wanting something so badly, you will throw yourself down a flight of stairs if you can’t have it. It’s the ache of wanting to risk everything for the smallest chance at something.

It’s a good kind of ache.

“Girl, wipe that horny look off your face,” Ari hisses. “We’re in public.”

My eyes are on Jack, watching as she whips her head around. She’s wearing her glasses, and her hair is freshly cut, shaved on the side and neat, like that day I first met her. She turns again, and she finally sees me and Ari by the door.

Her expression shifts, but I’m not sure what it’s shifting to; I’m too anxious to read the nuances of her mouth and eyes. “Shit. She’s seen me. What do I do?”

“Um, go talk to her?”

“What? No. Gross.”

“Continue standing in the doorway like a weirdo, then. You’re right, that’s a better plan.”

“Ugh. Fine. I’ll go talk to her.”

But before I can even motivate my legs to move again, Jack comes across the room to talk to me first. “What are you doing here?” she asks in her too-loud, easy-to-overhear voice. She doesn’t sound angry to see me, but she doesn’t sound quite happy, either. Approximately half the room turns to face us.

Ari slips her arm out of mine and vanishes into the crowd without a word.

I need to say a word, so I go with, “Congratulations!” and I sort of shout it at Jack while throwing one arm needlessly into the air. “You did it. I knew you could.”

It’s not the way I want to say those words to her, but Jack gives a little waning crescent of a smile, and it’s enough to turn my ache into a gentle, pulsating heat throughout my body.

“It’s not bad, is it?” Jack looks around the room—at the beautiful space she’s built with her own two hands and her willingness to fail.

“It’s incredible,” I say.