We’d finished school. I’d gone to uni and she’d got a job and we’d talked about it all the time, planning—dreaming, maybe, but it felt like planning. I never forgot that laugh, and New York settled into my heart, exciting and amazing and oddly uncomfortable, like it was too big to fit in there.

And I was all over it. I had websites bookmarked, pages and pages of must-sees and must-dos. Places to eat and drink and see and just be. Places I thought Lina would love, but some I’d never even told her about. Some that were just mine, I realised, with a shock of guilt. That always had been.

I put the postcards away, suddenly exhausted, my throat sore from all the talking. For the first time in weeks, when I got into bed and closed my eyes, they stayed that way for hours.

Sawyer’s was quiet, and when Nic let Emma go early she sat at the end of the bar and scrolled through her phone, waiting, while the rest of us cleaned and packed down. Dex came up, still in his chef’s pants and the same jacket he’d been wearing since I’d known him, and as they left together he gave me a look—victorious—and it made my stomach churn.

I stayed, working slowly and methodically, mopping the bar floor before I clocked off. Everybody was sitting around a table in the courtyard and I slid in next to Nic.

‘How are you, Caitie?’ he asked, handing me a beer.

I eyed him suspiciously as I took it and put it down on the table so I could get out my tobacco.

‘Fine, Nic,’ I said. ‘Why?’

‘You tell me,’ he drawled, elbowing me lightly as I rolled a cigarette.

I elbowed him back, a little less lightly. ‘Nothing to tell.’

‘So you struck out?’

I rolled my eyes. ‘It’s not like that.’

‘Right,’ he said. ‘So you say.’

He’d hugged me. Quick and awkward and it was over before I figured out what to do with my arms, and then he’d told me to be careful and turned and walked into his building, waving at me from behind the glass.

It was strange, and I’d been thinking about it more than maybe I should have been, about the whole night and everything he’d said, and combined with nearly five hours of sleep and as many cups of coffee it had left me wired, delirious. I could see why Nic was thinking what he was. I touched the end of the cigarette with my index finger and put it in my mouth.

‘It’s not,’ I said, sparking my lighter and taking a drag.

‘Why not?’ He was pouting like a petulant schoolboy.

I laughed, short and sharp. ‘Why do you think? He’s a doctor.’

‘So? You’re cute.’