This was how Will worked a crowd—be pleasant, interested, self-effacing. Shake hands, laugh easily, stay curious. In life, this kept him where he was comfortable: a place where he was unlikely to have to answer questions about himself, a place where he could keep people at a safe distance. And in his profession, in the hospitals and clinics where he’d trained and worked, it had always served him well as a bedside style, too. As best as he could, he tried to help people feel better about being in a place that had the word emergency in the title, even when he was talking to them about their chest pains or the bone sticking out of their shin. Tonight, he put his mind in the manner of work. This building was the bay, and to Nora and her neighbors, his plan for Donny’s apartment might as well be a heart attack or a compound fracture.

But out here at this backyard party, with his calm, ready smile and his willingness to listen—nobody, for the moment, seemed to feel all that bad about it.

Not even Nora.

Even from all the way across the yard, it was like he could feel her—like his body knew where hers was at all times. When gum-beneath-the-desk guy stopped talking, shaking Will’s hand a final time and telling him he was going to take a seat, Will only had to raise his eyes to find her, his gaze tracking automatically to where she stood. Up near the microphone, she and Marian and a smaller woman Will was almost certain was Emily Goodnight bent their heads together over a sheet of paper Marian held, Nora pointing down at it and nodding. When Emily leaned in and pointed at something else, Nora stood straighter and tipped her head back to laugh, one hand coming up to hold on to the flowers in her hair, and suddenly, Will remembered his own sporadic, Nora-specific chest pains. In that dress, with the smooth, somewhat-freckled skin of her shoulders showing, her ponytail foregone in favor of a thick, loosely woven braid . . .

Don’t, he told himself, remembering the smug way she’d greeted him, her smiling show about this big crowd and these ridiculous flower crowns. Maybe these people did hold a monthly poetry reading, but if it was this involved every time he’d eat this laurel wreath that kept tugging irritatingly on his hair. If Nora thought he was spooked, scared off his plans—well, she had another think coming. They were out here tonight in an I’m Enjoying Myself smile-off, and he was determined to win.

Right then, she looked his way. There was no point in pretending he hadn’t been watching her, so he simply raised his cup toward her, tipping it in what he thought was a toast to this not-so-friendly competition. She didn’t have a drink, so she couldn’t return the gesture, but he thought she might’ve raised her chin in acknowledgment.