Once it’s between my fingers, though, I get that same ripple of feeling I had when he’d stood right across from me, the counter and my secret between us. It’s not a piece of scrap paper at all. It’s a perfect, pristine rectangle. It’s cardstock, extra thick, rounded corners you pay extra for. Black ink, raised, so you can run the pad of your thumb over it and feel each letter. A lovely, Glyphic serif—what a surprise.

It’s simple. A name, a title, a place, an e-mail address.

A sign.

For the first time in months, my mind sparks with an idea. An outrageous idea, maybe, but still—an idea.

To write to Reid Sutherland, and to ask him if he wants to be part of my plan.

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

For the next six days, I am haunted not by a word, not by a letter; not even, really, by a name.

Instead I am haunted by a single sound: that brief, airy swoosh that came from my phone when I pressed send on my impulsive e-mail to Reid.

I hear it all through my last fill-in shift at Cecelia’s, when the sound is fresh, when I’m still in the headspace where it seems completely rational to navigate to my Sent folder so I can read my short, hastily drafted message every—oh, say twelve to fifteen minutes. I hear it all that night and the next day, when I try desperately to focus on work, when I resort to tasks like designing new color-coding systems for my pens (my old system was fine, really), when I do a six-part Instagram story on how to draw a black letter R. I tell myself it stands for Regret rather than a certain person who has not yet returned my e-mail. I do get a direct message that tells me my black letter R is “lol, boring,” which is only comforting in that I can’t imagine Reid had any such reaction to my e-mail.

I hear it Wednesday evening when I’m sitting on my couch, my browser open with approximately ten thousand Google Maps tabs open, research for the city walks I may very well be doing alone. That one is so real-seeming, even in spite of the headphones I have in my ears, that I look up, only to find Sibby opening the door to our apartment, her eyes down on her own phone, her eventual smile of greeting bland and noncommittal. I hear it again Thursday morning when she leaves for work, while I stay still and quiet in my bed, still groggy from a restless sleep.