But what could I say? I couldn’t tell Touchstone what he wanted to hear. I didn’t want to bring up anything that he didn’t want to share with me of his own volition—to force him to tell me something that we both already knew. I couldn’t tell him that, any more than Ros could tell me what I wanted to hear. In that moment, it seemed a miracle to me that anyone got together with anyone. And Ros and Jess—as harebrained and senseless as they were, as reckless as I thought it was, as destined for heartbreak—there was a part of me that softened toward them as I was there, sitting with Touchstone. It was nothing short of a miracle: that they were both in the right place at the right time, and they both wanted the same thing, and that thing was each other. That mutual desire alone seemed to me to be miraculous.

The fairy tale that I wanted was someone else’s. Ros had gotten a fairy tale; I had gotten a broken window and a bunch of dead plants.

And Phoebe. I had gotten Phoebe. And Oliver. And Touchstone.

“You know you’re more to me than a kindergarten ex-spouse, right?”

“Celia. I’m kidding.”

“I know you’re kidding. But I just—I want you to know that you’re my oldest friend. And I feel really lucky to have you in my life. Touch, I’m so sorry—”

“You don’t have to prostrate yourself on my behalf.”

“I’m so sorry,” I kept on, “about the way I treated you this summer. I totally abandoned you. You were right that day at the Dropped Acorn. And I thought I was fixing it with the dinner party, but I just made everything worse. We should have hung out, just the three of us.”

He looked a little abashed at the intensity of my apology. “Thanks,” he said finally. “I know you’re sorry. It’s okay. We’ll be okay.” There was a long pause. “Have you talked to Ros?”

“We don’t have to talk about Ros,” I said.

“They came by looking for you. Well, they came by first to talk to me—to tell me they, too, were sorry for having ditched me this summer. But they seemed… well, I don’t know how they seemed. They seemed like they just wanted to talk.”

“They sent me a text,” I admitted. Hey, they’d said. I’d had no idea how to respond.

The sail shifted in the breeze; for a moment, the house seemed to tip, like we were really on a boat.

“Do you really think they’re going to stay?” Touchstone asked.

“I think they would stay if they could,” I said. “Though I don’t know what their mom’s going to say about their plan.”