Ros didn’t answer for a minute, and in that long, painful pause I wished the summer had never happened, and that we were back home, watching Power Jam and hoovering Chinese food. I wished nothing between us had ever changed, that I’d never gone swimming that first night, never worked on costumes, never drunk the water from Lovesick Falls.

“We’ll be friends,” said Ros finally. “Though I think it will be different.”

“Different how?”

“Maybe we won’t be the Triumvirate. We’ll be more… fluid. Porous. It won’t be just the three of us all the time. Maybe we’ll let more people in.”

In spite of my stubbornness, I softened then, thinking of all the people that we had let in that summer: not just Jess but Phoebe and Oliver and Audrey, even Benna and Jacques (okay, maybe that last one was a stretch). In spite of what the spring’s waters had promised, we were leaving Lovesick Falls with more love than we’d had when we arrived. When I thought of it that way, I was glad that the summer had happened, and my heart expanded with all the love I felt. I didn’t want to wish the summer away but instead wanted to hold it tight in my palm, like a stone made smooth by a river.

“Three can be a tricky number, anyway,” I said slowly, remembering my mom’s long-ago speech about triangles. Then, thinking of our absent third side, I said, “I feel so bad about how we treated Touch.”

“I do, too,” said Ros. “I apologized to him, but it doesn’t feel like enough.”

“No apology could ever feel like enough. We forgot that he existed,” I said. “We were so hung up on our own problems that we wound up being awful to him.”

“I know,” they said. “We’ll find a way to make it up to him, I’m sure.”

“Maybe he needs flowers.”

“A bouquet of red noses,” said Ros, and I giggled a bit.

We walked in silence then, thinking of and missing Touchstone, wishing he were with us. He’d been such a good friend to both of us—we wouldn’t be in Lovesick Falls if it weren’t for him—and we’d let him down so thoroughly and completely. It wasn’t at all how I wanted the summer to go. It wasn’t the sort of person I wanted to be.

“I’m glad you’re coming home,” I said, thinking of our life after Lovesick.

“I’m not,” they said with a snort.

“Can I ask you why you wanted to stay here? Aside from Jess.”

“I just wanted a fresh start,” they said.

“Isn’t there a way to have a fresh start at home?” I said. “Like, can’t you get a drastic new haircut and call it a life?”