Recently, I had spent a great deal of time not obsessing over Imogen, on the grounds that she wanted nothing to do with me. So it came as sort of a surprise when my stomach filled with butterflies. Or maybe just one giant, kaiju-sized monster butterfly, like Mothra. The butterfly situation threatened to explode me from the inside.

“Sure?” I said.

“Is outside okay?”

I gave a wobbly affirmative nod.

We followed the human traffic to the nearest exit. All the while not speaking a word. Not even looking at each other, really. We broke away from the teenage current and exited through a pair of side doors.

It wasn’t the most scenic side of Piles Fork High School. It was a shady alcove, and the grass was dying in the shade. Ziggy had recently replaced the grass with new sod, but even that was dying.

But it was as good a place as any for Imogen to say what she had to say.

“I talked to…” she said, then hesitated. “I talked to Wynonna.”

I blinked.

“The Wynonna who is currently Ezra,” she clarified, so that there was no room for misinterpretation. “I talked to Holden, too. And Willow. And… I believe you. I believe all of you.”

“Oh,” I said. I wasn’t sure what else to say. My stomach felt dense, and my lungs were collapsing, and Mothra was flapping her mighty wings.

“I think what you two did was messed up,” she continued. “But… I think what I did wasn’t right either.”

“What you did?”

“I knew Wynonna didn’t like me like that. We had a whole summer to hash that out, and I had a whole year to get over her. And I did get over her. But then… well, Wynonna really felt like a different person. And she was a different person. But literally. Because she was you. And… I think I kind of fell for that person. Just a little bit.”

My jaw dropped.

“Look,” said Imogen, “I knew better than to jump back into something with Wynonna. She’s the best friend I’ve ever had, Ezra. And for the past month, I… I haven’t been that friend to her. But you have. And if you know Wynonna, you know that friends are all she has. Ezra, you’ve literally been all that she has. And… and…”

Imogen’s voice broke.

“I can never repay you for that.” She sniffed, wiping her eyes with her sleeve. “But since it’s what you and Wynonna were trying to do from the very beginning, and since I genuinely adore you as a human being, well… it’s nothing really, but I figure this is the least I can do.”

Imogen fumbled with her Union Jack purse, dropped to her knee, and pulled out both a corsage and a boutonnière—both pearly-white roses laced in ribbon—still inside their plastic cases.