I stirred my water with the lime. “So why didn’t you say yes?”

“Because I’m crazy and weird, like the rest of this ridiculous family. Win’s a wrecking ball, Leo’s talking to burning bushes, Dad’s out to lunch, Mom’s unmentionable . . .” She leaned on the table. “Can you please turn out to be a normal person, Ruby? For the sake of the rest of us?”

“That’s the working plan,” I said drily.

“Good,” Alice said, perky as she put her phone away. “Full disclosure, I saw him again and asked him out, and it’s now a verified thing and it’s lovely and that’s all I’m going to say for now.”

I smiled around my straw. She seemed happy. Flustered, but in a good way—waking up to a racing heart every morning, wondering what was around the corner, when she’d see him again . . .

“I’ve been thinking about you, you know,” she said. “What it would be like to make the same call.”

The sunlight shifted. I shaded my eyes. “What call?”

“You know.” She ran her fingers through her chin-length curls and gazed across the narrow street like her future was beckoning from the Williamsburg Bridge. “Walking away. Choosing normal.”

Choosing normal? Why would anyone choose normal?

“You’re first chair viola at the New York Philharmonic.”

“I know. It’s amazing. And all-consuming. And it’s making me kind of deranged, I think? I keep daydreaming about taking a break. What if I went away for a few weeks, somewhere tropical?” She lifted her mango iced tea as if to demonstrate what she would drink on vacation. “We have a recess coming up, I could do it. But would I bring my viola? Could I take a couple days off from practicing or would I lose my edge and my chair and my will to do it in the first place? Is there even a way for me to do something else, or is this it? Am I just—trapped?”

Her voice got louder and louder, like now that she’d told me one thing going on in her personal life, everything else was fighting to come out.

“I didn’t know you felt that way,” I said. “I always thought your life was . . .”

“What?” She leaned in.

“Perfect.”

“Fair enough,” she sighed. “But let me say, it’s easy for a life to be perfect when there’s hardly anything in it. Anyway, I don’t know how I feel yet.” She cut her omelet into triangles. “So tell me. Are you happier now?”

I considered the question, then took a bite of my brunch, closing my eyes as the papaya topping burst against my tongue. “I feel more awake. More like a real person.”

Jules might not have understood what that meant—but Alice did. She watched me for a moment, quietly nodding, then changed the subject. “Any wild plans for the weekend?”