I adore it. I love it. My hand wants to slip inside this pocket on rainy fall afternoons and chilly spring mornings. My hand wants to move in and just live here, right next to Erik’s.

But for now, there’s something else I need to do. Which is holding out my own phone to him. He looks at it skeptically, until I say, “My passcode is 1930.”

His mouth twitches. “Year of the first FIFA World Cup?”

I laugh, because . . . yeah. Out of everyone, he would know. And then I feel myself starting to cry, because of course, out of everyone in the entire world, he would know.

“Unlock it, please,” I say between sniffles. Erik is wide-eyed, alarmed by the tears, trying to come closer and to pull me to him, but I don’t let him. “Unlock my phone, Erik. Please.”

He quickly punches in the numbers. “Done. Sadie, are you—”

“Go to my contacts. Find yours. It’s . . . I changed it. To your actual name.” It’s hard to sustain high and prolonged levels of hatred for someone who’s saved on your phone with a cutesy nickname, I don’t add, but the thought has me chuckling, wet, watery.

“Done.” He sounds impatient. “Can I—”

“Okay.” I take a deep breath. “Now, please, unblock your number.”

A pause. Then: “What?”

“I blocked your number. Because I . . .” I wipe my cheek with the back of my hand, but there’re more tears coming. “Because I couldn’t bear to . . . Because. But I think you should unblock it.” I sniffle again. Loudly. “So if you decided that you don’t mind the fact that sometimes I can be a total lunatic, and if you want to give me a call and give the . . . the thing we were doing another chance, then I’d be happy to pick up and—”

I find myself pulled into his body, hugged tight against his chest, and I should probably insist on apologizing properly and offer an in-depth debriefing of everything that has occurred, but I just let myself sink into him. Smell his familiar scent. When he smooths my hair back, I bury my face into his shirt and melt, soaking in the silence and the relief.

“I think I just really suck at one-night stands,” I say, muffled into the soft fabric.

“We didn’t have a one-night stand, Sadie.”

“Okay. I mean, I don’t know. I’ve never . . .”

“I’ve had enough for both of us, and then some.” He pulls back to look at me, and repeats, “We did not have a one-night stand.”

I don’t make the conscious decision to kiss him. It just happens. One second we’re looking at each other, the next we’re not. Erik tastes like himself and a late-spring night in New York. He holds my head in his palm, presses me into him; he groans, bends down to push me into the wall, and licks the inside of my mouth.