“They were a very long time ago, so long that sometimes I forget that I’m the person it happened to,” she finally said. “I started drinking when I was ten, drinking hard when I was thirteen. I drank everything I could get my hands on all through high school.” And it was easy to get her hands on whatever, because her parents were happy to have her drinking with them.

“Then senior year, I had a crush on a girl who went to young people’s AA meetings, so I started going to impress her. We didn’t get together, and she didn’t stay sober, but it stuck for me. I worked my ass off to retake my SATs and send out my college applications. I had a great school librarian who went way out of her way to help, and by some miracle, I got in.” Without any help from my parents, who could only complain that I wasn’t fun anymore, she thought.

“I quit for good, I hope, when I was eighteen, then spent a few years trying to catch up to everyone else, emotionally. I barely knew what it meant to be human at that point. I’d been basically feral for a long time.”

Miriam looked up at her, all big hazel eyes, and Noelle’s heart somersaulted. “I’m so glad. That you’re sober. That you’re here. That you’re you.”

“Me too. I’m really glad to be me, and here, and sober right now,” Noelle agreed, dropping her forehead to Miriam’s.

Mrs. Matthews, Mr. Matthews, and Hannah all sought her out at some point during the dinner to rib her gently about how she and Miriam were finally, as Hannah put it, “dealing with the incredibly annoying sexual tension that’s making it difficult to get any work done around here.”

Noelle almost wished they’d hidden their new relationship for a little while, until she realized that every time they passed, they reached out for the small of a back or the crook of a neck, like magnets. Until she looked up in the middle of a conversation to find Miriam watching her, and she knew her face must have transformed with wanting, because a blush rose immediately on Miriam’s cheeks. Noelle wanted to run her fingers over that pink skin, to see how much pinker she could make it, how much of Miriam’s body blushed. She realized there was no hiding this.

Goddamn it. All her bullshit talk about how she couldn’t fall in love and she was already three-fourths gone for this woman. They’d only just started kissing.

She was so screwed.

Now she had to hope like hell she really could trust Miriam with her heart.