“I hope so.” Joy recalls their last deal. Same day, same time, ten years from now. He’s most likely moved on from her, but she still wants to see him. She’ll honor their deal, she promised. And if he shows, which she hopes he does, they’ll take it from there.

Meanwhile, she needs to get her own life together.

She picks up Judy’s stack of lists and drops them into the hatbox. She then drops the box into the plastic garbage bag.

“Are you sure you want to get rid of those?” Taryn asks.

“I am.” She ties up the bag and picks it up. She shoulders her purse and takes a last look around the small one-bedroom apartment. The purple couch she’d been sleeping on for months has been loaded onto the truck. So have her clothes and Taryn’s dishes and everything else they’d brought with them and collected since they’ve lived in the city.

“Are you sad to leave this place?” she asks Taryn.

Taryn shakes her head. “Leaving is easy when you’ve got someplace else to be.”

“Yes, it is.” New York treated her well while she was here, but it’s lost its luster. She is past ready for some California sunshine and sand. She might even take up surfing again.

She follows Taryn out of the apartment and dumps the bag into the building’s recycling below the stoop. “As soon as we get to California, I’m going to write my own goal list.”

Taryn throws her arm around her. They look up at the redbrick building with the columns of kitchen windows, four rows high. Taryn grins at her. “Jo-Jo’s Goals. Best idea yet.”

“I think so, too.” Joy leans her head against her best friend and sighs. “So long, New York. You were good to us, but we have sunsets to chase.”

CHAPTER 32

CHAPTER 32

AFTER

Joy

At almost the exact time, same day, she did ten years previous, Joy maneuvers her Mini Cooper into the same parking space at Rob’s Diner in Ludlow, California. She scans the parking lot for a familiar car, even though she doesn’t know what type of car he drives. She doesn’t even know if he’ll show. But she doesn’t want to miss the chance to “take it from there,” as Dylan had proposed all those years ago.

Hard to believe it’s been ten years since they made that deal. Only three years since she divorced Mark, returned to California, and launched Surfari Soaps & Salves.