“What are you saying?” Noelle asked, although she knew. She wanted Miriam so much, and she wanted to hear, explicitly, with no room for uncertainty, that Miriam wanted her back just as much. She needed to know they were diving off this cliff together.

“It’s my birthday, and I want a birthday kiss,” Miriam said, spinning out and then coming back to a stop, very close to Noelle’s face. Their breath mingled, and Noelle had to fight to take her eyes off Miriam’s lips.

“Your birthday is tomorrow,” Noelle pointed out. “I know this because Mrs. Matthews has been fretting about your cake for three days. It’s a surprise, though, so don’t tell her I told you.”

“It’s after midnight, so it is my birthday, and I want to start my birthday out with kissing,” Miriam whispered, somehow moved even closer.

Noelle put her hands on Miriam’s hips. To steady herself, so Miriam didn’t knock her over. That was all.

“I thought you agreed this was a terrible idea,” Noelle said.

“It was a terrible idea, a few days after my breakup,” Miriam corrected her, “when everything was ass over teakettle. But we can’t pretend there’s nothing happening. We’ve been circling around it, and it’s making me twitchy. We can’t avoid it forever. We’ll combust.”

Noelle already felt like she was combusting, right now, smelling Miriam’s toothpaste and the coconut smell of her hair as it blew around them both.

“Why now? I thought we were feeling each other out?” Noelle asked, liking that Miriam was impatient.

“You stood up for me, against your best friend in the world. You believed in me. It made me want to stop waiting. Besides”—Miriam batted her eyelashes—“why feel each other out, when we could be feeling each other up?”

Noelle barked out a surprised laugh, cutting herself off when Miriam ran a finger down her arm. She growled a little in the back of her throat.

“I’m not kidding, Noelle. I can’t stop thinking about touching you. Remind me why we shouldn’t get involved?” Miriam grabbed Noelle’s hands again. Her face, lit up by moonlight, was so beautiful it felt unreal.

“You just broke up with your fiancée,” Noelle reminded her. “We are in the middle of trying to save our shared business. We live in the same building.” She wasn’t even sure she believed any of these reasons, after her talk with Hannah, but they were her only defense left.

Her hormones shouted at her to stop mounting a defense.

“Logistics, logistics.” Miriam pulled Noelle close so their bodies were flush. “What if what’s going on between us is real, and we miss out on it because we’re scared? We’ve both spent so much time trying not to get hurt, and how is that living?”