She let her gaze wander over to Stuart, who was laughing with his stylist, a cute little punky goth woman. She could not, even at the very stretches of her imagination, imagine the old Stuart, the Stuart she’d grown up with, the Stuart in California last summer, the cynical, bitter Stuart she thought she knew ever doing something like Janet had described. This Stuart, on the other hand, this lovely, well-adjusted man who was both her oldest and newest friend, was exactly the kind of person to cause that kind of scene. At first, she’d been a little shaken by all his changes—no, not just shaken, also saddened. He seemed to have grown up, somehow, all on his own, and seemingly all at once. It had happened without her, and that made her sad for both of them, almost as if she’d been holding him back. But she realized now that was never true. He’d simply done it on his own, and love had helped him get here. She loved this new version of her friend as much as the old one. No—she loved him even more.

“What about you?” Janet asked, startling her.

“What about me?”

“Are you going to make the same mistake?”

“What do you mean?”

Janet rolled her eyes. “Oh, come on. Don’t play dumb. I mean with Maddie. Are you going to make the same mistake with her?”

She frowned. “I wouldn’t put it that way, but I have to go back. My life, my career, everything is in New York. I can’t just give that up.”

“Not everything. Stuart and Maddie are here. They matter, too. Your job means that much to you?”

She sighed. “It’s not only my own job. A lot of people depend on me for their livelihoods. I would be putting more than my career in jeopardy.”

Janet squinted at her, pouting. “Well, that sucks.”

She couldn’t help but laugh. “Yeah. It does.”

“So you’ll leave her behind? Leave us behind?”

Her gaze traveled over to Stuart again, who was laughing at something Jos had said. She’d missed him terribly and knew she would again. Then she looked outside, at the brightly decorated downtown street now dappled with fresh snow—the town she liked more than she would ever have believed. She already had a favorite coffee shop, brewery, and restaurant here—more than she could say of New York, actually, where it seemed like the moment she started liking something, it closed.