Malcolm occupied the bulk of her immediate thoughts, but Fox was there too. All day.

When Joy actually arrives home, Pepper meets her at the door as always. She picks her cat up, saying, “At least you’re happy to see me.” Her evening routine proceeds as normal too (minus another call with Grace, who does not appreciate being ignored).

By the time Joy goes to bed, at a rebellious eleven p.m., she feels like she’s waited long enough. Flipping through her photos, she watches the knock-knock joke videos they made together at Fable’s.

Joy’s chest feels too tight, breathing too shallow. She isn’t going to cry, it doesn’t feel like a sobbing kind of sadness. It’s a creeping desolation—the kind that builds so slowly, you’re used to it by the time you notice it.

They were always going to end this way. She knew it the whole time. She has no right to feel sad about something she had three and a half days to experience and prepare for.

Why did this feel so hard? Why couldn’t she shoot him with finger guns, give him a wink and a smile, and walk away like she normally does when a connection ends?

Pepper meows loudly, trying to walk across Joy’s face because she holds nothing but utter contempt for personal body space. “Look, this is Fox.” She turns Pepper around to show her the phone.

All at once, Joy realizes she has truly fallen to a new low. She’s showing her cat, who could not care less, videos of someone she’s probably never going to see again because she has no way to contact him without going through Malcolm.

Except she does. She does!

Before Joy can think twice about it, she opens her Rule of Thirds DMs and sends him a message: text me with her phone number. There. Olive branch extended. If he wants to talk to her, he’ll meet her halfway.

This romance shit is stressful as hell.

Joy sets her phone down in favor of picking Pepper up and letting her lay on her chest for scritches. Five minutes later, her phone rings and she doesn’t recognize the number, but it’s local.

“Hello?”

“Joy?”

That familiar rumble almost makes her astral project straight into her next life. Joy holds in a squeak, simultaneously cradling Pepper and kicking her feet into the air. She calms down quickly, sitting up and saying, “The instructions were to text me,” with a huge grin on her face.