I didn’t remind her that she almost had, what with her being willing to break up with him to protect him. I was like her polar opposite, selfishly hanging on to Noah without giving him all the facts. Hiding it from him.

And from myself.

Everything I’d ever asked him to do, he’d done without question. And all he’d ever wanted from me was my honesty, and I couldn’t even give him that.

I was tired of thinking about me and my pathetic lack of a life. “Things are better with Harmony?”

She smiled, her first real one since she’d arrived. “She has bought so many baby clothes, and we don’t even know the sex of the baby yet. She’s very excited to be a grandma. Although she wants us to have the baby call her Gigi, and I’m still deciding how I feel about that.”

It was nice that good things were happening in the world. I tried to say that, but instead I started crying again. It happened a lot recently.

“Sweetie,” she said, hugging me. “I know. I thought for sure you guys were going to make it. You had this relationship like me and Allan—you would have kept him grounded and stopped him from getting a big head, and he would have reminded you to have fun and done romantic things like fly you to Las Vegas just because.”

And the fact that she was willing to say something about him actually stopped my tears. It surprised me; I would have expected her words to make me feel worse, but instead they made me think that I hadn’t made it all up. He had loved me and we were good together.

We’d shared something special, even if we didn’t have it anymore.

“I never told him I loved him,” I confessed.

“I’m not surprised. That wouldn’t have been easy for you to say to anyone. Again, dad issues and kissing phobia, but how could you have said that when you knew deep in your heart you weren’t being totally truthful with him?”

That hit me hard, piercing me like a knife. That’s why I hadn’t been able to tell him. How did she always see me so clearly when I ran around not knowing why I did half the stuff I did?

She sighed and said, “I’m going to tell you this and then we have to stop talking about him, because it’s going to make you sadder, okay?”

I nodded, probably too eagerly.

“He is so miserable without you. He pretends like he’s okay, but I can hear it in his voice and see it in his eyes. He misses you like crazy.”

“Does he ask about me?”