What more could she want from life than the knowledge that someone loves her? Even more importantly; what more could she ever hope to feel than the love she feels for Alex? It is more real to her than anything else she has ever known. It’s more than excitement, or breathlessness, or ecstasy. It’s the calm comfort that seizes her when they are alone; that’s her love for Alex.

She opens her eyes again and glances down at the book in her hand, an address scrawled in Orla’s messy handwriting on the first page. Her old friend placed that book into her hands and tore down, in one swift motion, the walls of lies she built to hold herself safe. “She said she found this in a book shop and asked me to give it to you,” was all she said, and it was all Connie needed to hear.

Molly’s words to her that afternoon resonate through her mind now, too. “The only person who ever got away with telling you the truth was Alex and she’s not here, now. You fell apart without her. You hid it well, better than her, but you did. You need her, idiot. And if you saw how she was dressed last week you’d realize she needs you too. You’re insufferable without each other.”

There was no epiphany that afternoon, two days ago. There was no grand realization or abrupt change of heart. All Molly and Orla served to do was reiterate what she already knew, deep down. This book and Molly’s words were not the catalysts but the key, a reminder that she still has time. She holds that book tight against her chest and glances up. It’s the right building, she’s sure. Luckily the main door is open because the buzzer is out of order. And she shuffles up the narrow stairs awkwardly, two suitcases full of all the bits and pieces of her old life in tow, and when she finally reaches the third floor there is no hesitance, no doubt or second guesses, when she hammers down on door number seven.

Idiot, she thinks. She’s probably at work. She knocks again, just to be sure, and readies herself to sit down on the steps and wait for evening to come.

But if she listens closely there is music wafting through from behind the closed door—The Cure, she realizes, always The Cure, and then there are footsteps coming closer, the hinges creaking open, and then—

“Connie?”

—And then there’s Alex, wide-eyed and frozen in place.

Connie wonders, briefly, only just for a moment, if Alex even wants her here in the first place. They stand and stare at each other. Maybe she should have called before spontaneously uprooting and ruining her entire life. But then Alex is laughing, that manic, disbelieving laugh that follows Connie everywhere she goes and she barrels forward with a desperate, depraved sort of urgency that Connie is sure should embarrass her but fuck, what does it matter? The book falls to her feet—Peter Pan, of course, with Alex’s address in Orla’s handwriting scribbled on the front page. And Alex’s note scrawled underneath it in the tidiest handwriting she could manage; Growing up doesn’t have to mean giving up. I’ll keep on waiting and dreaming, fool that I am. Yours, always.