I make a quick stop off for groceries, indulging in an old best friend tradition of picking up a few of Sibby’s favorite things, too, because I figure she’ll appreciate that after being away. It’s Friday afternoon crowded, but Trina behind the counter still makes time to tell me she got rid of the infection in her belly button ring and celebrated by getting a new piercing “somewhere private.” Thankfully for me and everyone else in line behind me she does not offer to show it to me. When I get to my place, our post office guy has our bank of mailboxes open, so I sit on the steps and chat with him—he loves a good weather talk—while I wait for him to get to our apartment’s delivery.

My phone pings when he’s finishing up and I check it as I’m waving goodbye to him, smiling as I see I have a new message from Reid.

it says, because Reid texts direct, the same way he talks direct.

You only like him, Meg, I tell myself as I stare down at it, that heart-tightening tugging again.

I spell in my head.

But right as I’m getting ready to respond, my screen flashes with a different four-letter L word, and not the one I’ve been trying not to feel.

L-A-R-K, it reads, and that’s the first indication I get that my weekend is about to go a lot differently than I’d planned.

Here’s the thing: It is not easy preparing your home for an unplanned visit from a princess.

Lark’s voice on the phone had been soft, friendly, maybe even embarrassed—so different from the sharp way she’d spoken to me the last time I’d seen her. She was in the neighborhood, she’d said, and was hoping she could stop by the shop.

“I’m at home now, but I could get back there quickly,” I’d told her. “But it’ll be a full house—there’s a class happening there right now. How about we meet at a—” I’d begun, then remembered her reluctance about pretty much everywhere else.

“I could come to you,” she’d said, filling up the awkward silence, and two minutes later I’d been texting her my address, frantically running through a mental list of all the stuff I needed to pick up.