I’d gone back upstairs to my echoing apartment, but only briefly. Maybe it would’ve been the braver thing, to stay there alone that first night, but instead I’d packed a bag and gone to Reid’s, using the key he’d given me. I’d stayed up late, working on my final Make It Happyn sketches while sitting on his terrible couch, hoping he might get home before eleven.

Because that—Reid working with this fixed, flared intensity—that is the other thing that’s changed since Maryland. In some ways, it’s as if he and I are still playing by the rules I set that night in the basement. We don’t say anything about New York, about him staying. We don’t wonder aloud about whether it’s too soon, whether it’s even possible. But clearly, something has shifted for Reid, and it doesn’t matter that I see him less lately while he keeps these long hours.

Because I know that this shift is, at least in part, about me. About us.

“I have to see this through,” he tells me, late at night, holding me close. “And then . . .”

But he always trails off, the game still in play. It’s just that now, the game seems more serious between us than ever.

“Hey, ladies,” Lachelle says, coming into the back room and setting her bag on the chair next to me. That must mean it’s close to Lachelle’s four o’clock client meeting, and also close to when I need to get on the subway.

“Look what Meg finished,” Lark says, turning the planner toward Lachelle. They’re kind of an odd pair, Lark and Lachelle, but each time Lark comes to the shop, Lachelle always gives her a warm, teasing welcome—calling her princess and asking her about her throwing arm.

“Ooooh,” Lachelle says, leaning down. “This is so you!”

“That’s what I said, too!” Lark says, delighted. “Meg, I want you to do one of these for my sister. She—”

“Nuh-uh,” says Lachelle. She hooks a thumb at me as though she’s my first base coach. “This woman has a very important deadline in two days. Nothing until that’s over.”

“Oh, that’s right,” Lark says, because now she knows about my deadline, too. “Well, after—”

“Actually,” I say proudly, “I’m finished. I scanned all the sketches this morning. They’re ready to go.”

It’s so hard to believe my pitch is almost here. When I think about where I was this spring, how utterly blocked I was, how different things were—it’s a miracle I’ve actually got something to present. Something I’m so proud of. Like Reid, I’ve been working hard, too, more determined than ever to succeed at this pitch, as though getting it is somehow just as important for him, for us, to stay.