But his hair was cut short: buzzed over his ears and up the back, with long brown curls spilling out over his forehead. Mags brought her hand up to the back of his head. It felt like something was missing.

“You should have come with me, Margaret,” he said. “The young woman who attacked me couldn’t stop herself.”

“No,” she said, rubbing Noel’s scalp. “It looks good. It suits you.”

Everything was the same, and everything was different.

Same people. Same music. Same couches.

But they’d all grown apart for four months, and in wildly different directions.

Frankie brought beer and hid it under the couch, and Natalie was drunk when she got there. Connor brought his new college boyfriend, and everyone hated him—and Alicia kept trying to pull Connor aside to tell him so. The basement seemed more crowded than usual, and there wasn’t as much dancing . . .

There was about as much dancing as there would be at a normal party—at somebody else’s party. Their parties used to be different. They used to be twenty-five people in a basement who knew each other so well, they never had to hold back.

Noel didn’t dance tonight. He stuck with Pony and Simini and Frankie. He stuck by Mags’s side, like he was glued there.

She was so glad that she and Noel hadn’t stopped texting—that she still knew what he woke up worried about. Everybody else’s inside jokes were seven months old, but Noel and Mags hadn’t missed a beat.

Noel took a beer when Frankie offered him one. But when Mags rolled her eyes, he handed it to Pony.

“Is it weird being in Omaha?” Simini asked her. “Now that everybody’s left?”

“It’s like walking through the mall after it closes,” Mags said. “I miss you guys so much.”

Noel startled. “Hey,” he said to Mags, pulling on her sleeve.

“What?”

“Come here, come here—come with me.”

He was pulling her away from their friends, out of the basement, up the stairs. When they got to the first floor, he said, “Too far, can’t hear the music.”

“What?”

They went down the stairs again and stopped midway, and Noel switched places with her, so she was standing on the higher step. “Dance with me, Mags, they’re playing our song.”

Mags tipped her head. “ ‘A Thousand Years’?”

“It’s our actual song,” he said. “Dance with me.”

“How is this our song?” she asked.

“It was playing when we met,” Noel said.

“When?”

“When we met,” he said, rolling his hand, like he was hurrying her along.

“When we met here?”

“Yes. When we met. Downstairs. Sophomore year. And you saved my life.”

“I never saved your life, Noel.”

“Why do you always ruin this story?”

“You remember the song that was playing when we met?”

“I always remember the song that’s playing,” he said. “All the time.”