I laugh. “Yes. Movement is the only way to describe what you were doing.”

Sabrina snorts at us and, when Dave calls to her, jogs ahead, but Elliot stops me with a hand on my arm, and we get a few curious glances as the rest of the group passes us on their way to the parking lot. Luckily, Sean and Phoebe are still ahead of us.

“Hey. So.” Elliot tucks his hands into his pockets. His shoulders rise, pressing into his neck. He is still so angular, so long.

“Hey. So,” I repeat.

“Thanks for inviting me today.” He gives me this smile that I don’t know I can describe. It’s the smile that says, I know we’ve known each other forever, but it still means the world to me that you included me here. How he does that with a simple curve of his lips and some eye contact, I’ll never know.

“Well,” I tell him, “you should probably know that I hosted this entire thing so that I could invite you to meet my friends.” Only when I say it out loud do I realize it’s true. This is what Elliot does to me: he pulls honesty from those scrambled parts of my brain.

His eyes narrow, irises blooming as his pupils become pinpoints in the dim light beneath the clouds. “Is that true?”

“Why did you pull me back?” I ask him instead. I don’t even know what I want him to say here. How will I feel if he says that he’s come to his senses and realizes that I’m right, that we can only be friends? A treasonous part of me hopes I don’t find out.

“I wanted to ask you something.”

My chest is a jungle; my heart is the drum. Am I thrilled or terrified?

“Just wondering when we could get together next,” he says.

“Oh.” I blink over his shoulder to the towering eucalyptus trees swaying in the darkening sky. “I think I have some time off around Thanksgiving.”

He nods, and my heart droops a little. Why did I say that? Thanksgiving feels really far away.

Clearing his throat, he says, “Andreas is getting married in December—”

“December?” It seems an odd month for a wedding. Also, much farther away than Thanksgiving, if that’s when he’s thinking we’ll hang out next.

“New Year’s Eve, actually,” he clarifies, “and I was wondering if you wanted to come with me.”

New Year’s.

New Year’s.

He’s really asking me that.

And from the look in his eyes, I know that he’s aware of the weight of that date.

But instead of addressing that beast, I ask, “You don’t want to hang out until December?”

I watch the thrill of this pass through his hazel eyes. “Of course I do.” He laughs. “I’m free pretty much anytime you want to hang out. But since it’s a holiday I wanted to ask ahead of time if you’d come.”

“I can’t come as your date.”

Elliot shakes his head. “I’m not asking you on a date, Macy, while your fiancé and future stepdaughter are climbing into the car right there.”