They don’t pass. They honk several more times. The car pulls up beside me and slows down to match my pace, and it’s only then that I realize there is a vast difference between walking across the Burnside Bridge in the middle of the night during a snowstorm with Jack and walking across the Burnside Bridge on a random Tuesday at eight o’clock by myself. I avoid looking directly at the vehicle—a truck, I think—that has decided to crawl along beside me, honking.

I pull out my phone, ready to utilize the emergency call feature just as the driver of the truck rolls down the passenger-side window and yells, “Hey!” And I swear I recognize that voice.

“Elle! Hey, Elle, stop!”

The truck pulls up beside me with its emergency flashers on. “Holy shit! You walk fast!” the driver shouts, and then they’re leaping out of the car, and the driver is Jack.

Jack, on the Burnside Bridge. Jack, in the snow. She’s silhouetted in the harsh glare of Gillian’s headlights, so all I can make out is the breadth of her shoulders and the length of her legs, her entire body dotted with snowflakes.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“What am I doing?” she shouts. Jack always thinks she has to shout when she’s outside, as if somehow the fresh air makes it impossible to hear her naturally loud volume. “You’re the one who’s walking alone in the snow!”

“I—I needed some space,” I say. “To think.”

She takes a step forward and shifts from silhouette to full, in-color person, and even though I just saw her twenty minutes ago, and even though she literally just broke my heart, the sight of her makes me feel invincible and devastated all at once.

“That was pretty humiliating back there,” Jack screams at me, even though we’re ten feet apart.

Fuck. “I’m so sorry, Jack. The last thing I wanted to do was embarrass you at your event.”

“Oh no, I wasn’t.” A chin flick to get her hair out of her eyes. “This is a soft opening. Everyone in there was a friend. I meant, that was humiliating for you.”

Even bigger fuck. “Well.” I give an awkward shrug. “You’re worth the humiliation, I guess.”

Jack sucks in a breath and pulls herself up taller.

“Is this… is that why you followed me all the way to the Burnside Bridge, Jack? To tell me I should be embarrassed?”

“No, I…” She shoves her fists into the pockets of her Carhartt jacket, goddamn her. “I opened your present after you gave your humiliating little speech. It is—”