“Let me get one more of this one,” she said, not even really to him, and so he stood where he was, watching her climb a couple more steps to get the angle she wanted. He smiled as she bent close, by now knowing that this was one of the pictures where she was trying to show something to Emily about spores. He thought of Gerald and Sally, hoped their date—Will had given his boss three different ideas—would go as well as this one had.

“They’re gonna kick us out of here,” he said, teasing.

“I’ll get it done faster if you quit talking.”

He chuckled at this familiar ribbing, something they’d practiced during their various feuds early on and perfected during their projects over the last few weeks.

He was looking up at her when it happened—when her brow furrowed, when her lips pulled to one side. When she reached out the hand that wasn’t holding her phone to wave away a fly that buzzed lazily around the very leaves she was trying to photograph. When she clucked her tongue and said quietly, “Get. Get!” with a familiar trace of laughter in her voice.

When his heart hiccupped.

Like he was fifteen all over again.

“This reminds me,” he said, before he could think. Before he could yank himself out of the past he’d lulled himself into thinking was so safe tonight. “Of the first time I ever saw you.”

She straightened, turning to face him, to look down at him, and he almost wanted to check his hands for cherry tomatoes. But no—they were where he’d left them, still in his pockets, still in control.

“You mean the morning I knocked my plant over?”

Unbeknownst to her, she’d given him an out with this, and he could’ve taken it. Of course, it could’ve been that morning. Of course he could’ve said, Yes, when you knocked your plant over. But for some reason, down here like this, Nora above him like that, he couldn’t seem to stop himself.

So instead he said, “No. Not that morning.”

She blinked down at him, something seeking and intense in her eyes, and he knew he was going to tell her. He didn’t have to tell it all, but he knew he should tell her this, on this night they were breaking their routine.

“The day I came with my mom, when I was fifteen. I saw you, up on your balcony.”

“You did?”

From where he stood, he could see her chest rising and falling, quicker than normal.

“‘Saw’ might be an overstatement.” He reached up, touched the edge of his glasses, and her lips curved softly, her eyes still stunned.

“You were trying to get squirrels away from your grandmother’s tomato plants,” he added. “Nonna, you called her. I’d never heard that word before.”