Nora dropped her head back, closing her eyes. Behind her lids the words Good luck flashed irritatingly, so she opened them again, staring up at Dee’s ceiling and sighing out a disappointed breath. It wasn’t fair, maybe, to be upset that Will hadn’t reached out, especially not after all the times she’d said it was better to wait until she was back. At first, she’d set that boundary out of fear—fear that she’d cry, fear that she’d blurt everything she felt out into the open air and freak him out forever. Even as she’d listened to the message he’d left her the morning of her flight—Nora, he’d begun, in that perfect way, I wanted to hear your voice before you left—she’d still forced herself to finish packing, to get all the way to the airport before she let herself text back. Some of it had been that same fear, but some of it had been her belief that Will really did need the time. That what he needed to work out—about his parents, about being serious—he needed to work out without her.

Now, though—a day away from heading back—she worried she’d made a mistake, insisting on the wait. Banishing him to silence when he’d at least tried to reach out, and all because she hadn’t wanted to take the risk: to tell him she loved him, and to have him not say it back.

To have him not feel it back.

“I will,” she said finally, trying to convince herself, trying to ignore the vise grip she felt around her heart when she thought about it. “I’m going to tell him how I feel, and if he doesn’t feel it, too, I’ll move on.”

She paused, lifting her head to look across the way at her friend. “Not that I have a great track record of moving on from things in an expedient manner.”

Dee smiled sympathetically, patting Nora’s shin. “Now, now,” she said. “Give yourself some credit. You forget the pictures you showed me of that bathroom you redid.”

“True,” Nora thought, trying not to focus on the fact that she’d done nearly all of that moving on with Will right at her side. “And I have plans now.”