Adam and Grace are throwing a party.

Fine, they have people over to help put together wedding favors; it’s practically an assembly line. But when Eli accepts the FaceTime and I see a familiar group of people sprawled out behind Adam in their living room, I’m suddenly back in Seattle, both in the past and what could be my future. I’m FaceTiming with my friends during my six months there, snagging them in parts and pieces when our schedules allow while they integrate themselves deeper into the lives of the same coupled-up friends behind them now, or their new Person, in Jamie’s case. Saying “No big deal!” when they tell me they can’t visit after all and deleting the list of places I wanted to take them. I’m FaceTiming them sometime next year from the apartment that only holds one body—mine—while Grace holds Baby Song- Kim.

Will their kid know me, or will some friend who lives down the street with a similarly tiny potato person become the godparent?

God. Am I going to be one of the godparents? Is there a test I have to take to prove myself? Can godparents be long distance?

“Come back,” a voice murmurs.

Eli. His hand presses into the dip of my lower back, and all of my present senses slam back into me.

“Dude, where were you just now, the moon?” Adam asks, rapping the screen with his knuckles.

I point at my ear with my middle finger. “No, it’s just hard to hear with the rager you’re throwing.” I glance at Eli, who bites back a smile. “Replay the last thirty seconds for me?”

“I was just telling Adam how charming and persuasive we were, and how they now have a kickass cake,” Eli says. His fingers are still notched between the bumps in my spine. On screen, we’re standing close with the

bakery just behind us, shoulders barely brushing. No one would know he’s got his hand on me.

“You have a cake!” I exclaim.

“We have a cake,” Adam crows. “I’m so relieved that I’m not even going to freak out about the number I just saw on Venmo.”

Grace pops up behind Adam, a long strand of ribbon looped around her neck. “Hi, hello. I love you both always, but I love you extra hard today. I’m going to take down half of that cake on Saturday.” Her eyes fill with tears and she throws up her hands, exasperated. “Oh no, I’m crying just thinking about it.”

“Seriously, thank you.” Adam places a hand over his heart as Grace gets pulled back into the fray. “I was worried we wouldn’t land it today. The appointment was taking so long, I thought maybe something had gone wrong again, like at the other place.”

“It was nothing like the other place,” Eli says, a protective note in his voice. “Georgia killed it. She had Tai in the palm of her hand.”

I elbow him. “We both did, and it helps that Tai was an angel. Plus, you’re the one who found the bakery in the first place.”

“You would’ve found it if I didn’t.”

“Well, yeah, because the bakery was on my list.” He grins. “We’re doing this again, huh?”

I roll my eyes. “My point is, don’t give me all the credit. You killed it, too.”

“It’s that gold standard teamwork,” he says with a smile and soft eyes, and it’s true. We’re an amazing team right now. We need to keep it that way.

“Hello, can we focus on me for a sec?” comes a grating voice.

Eli’s amused huff brushes against my cheek. When I glance back at the phone, Adam’s looking between me and Eli with an inscrutable expression. “Damn, you two are really vibing today. What’s up?”

Just a minor morning dry hump and a mountain of confusing feelings, I think, my cheeks heating.

Eli’s answer is more PR-friendly. “We have the ultimate motivation of not fucking up your wedding, and a ticking clock as the cherry on top.

There’s still work to do.”

Adam sighs. “Right, the DJ. In brighter news, Aunt Julia got dinner squared away. One of her friends owns a catering business and he apparently owes her for something that sounded too sexual for me to dig into, so we’re set. And everything is really going okay at Blue Yonder?”

“Everything’s on track,” I tell him. It’s a miracle, honestly, how smoothly everything’s gone on site. We’ll be done by the time they get up here on Friday, no problem.

“That’s great.” He sags back against the couch, his relief evident as he looks between us. “You two are my curse-breakers, I swear.”

We wave him off, but he leans in, expression earnest. “Seriously, whatever you’re doing?” He points between me and Eli. “Keep it up, because it’s working.”

“You’re sure you’re okay with me staying here again?” Eli asks when we get to the cottage after dinner.

He’s hovering in the doorway with an air mattress tucked under his arm and the moon at his back. I forgot to leave lights on, so his face is bathed in shadow, making his expression unreadable.

“It’s fine,” I say, kicking off my sandals. My heart beats hard against my ribs.

The walk back to the cottages was quiet, all the conversations we haven’t had keeping stride with us: what happened this morning; the memories we handed over at the bakery to sell our story, when realistically we didn’t need to; the way we both patently ignored Adam’s keep doing what you’re doing after he hung up.

And most importantly, tonight’s sleep situation.

At dinner, Cole told us that Cal had tried taping up the holes in the ceiling of Eli’s cottage earlier, but that it was “pretty fucked.”

“I figured,” Eli said, running a hand over his jaw. “With everything we had going on today, I didn’t think about finding somewhere to stay.”

“Just crash at Georgia’s again. It’s the path of least resistance,” Cole said, flicking a wrist at me with so much nonchalance that it could only be calculated. Sure enough, he continued, “Unless it would be too weird, what with your previous intimate knowledge of each other’s nighttime habits.”

Eli sighed. “From the bottom of my heart, please shut the fuck up.”

Julia leaned past Cole’s shoulder, pushing back her halo of curly blond hair. “My darling son, stop being a dick.”

“What a thing for a mother to say,” Cole said, feigning insult, but the emotion was lost in the sharp curve of his smirk.

Julia hooked her arm around Cole’s neck. “Eli, there’s an air mattress somewhere in the Big House. Want us to dig it up for you?”

Eli and I exchanged a look that transmitted mutual agreement. If we said no, it would look weirder than saying yes. And anyway, by that point it was approaching nine. It had been a long day. I had no energy to come up with an alternate plan, especially when, unfortunately, Cole was right—it was the easiest option.

Just not the safest, I think as Eli brushes past me now, toeing off his sneakers by the door and setting the air mattress down next to them. I want to strangle the not-insignificant part of me that hopes there’s a hole in it.

After I click on the living room lamp, I straighten to find Eli with his gaze pinned to me.

“You okay?”

I frown. “I just told you it’s fine.”

“Not about that,” he says, his eyes moving over my face. “You’ve been quiet since we talked to Adam earlier.”

I raise an eyebrow. “Keeping tabs on me?”

“Always,” he says with a grin that fades quickly. “Just making sure, that’s all. Adam is good at communicating his gratitude, but he’s also good at saying shit without thinking. When he brought up Margot—”

“Oh, that didn’t bother me.” Adam bringing up the disaster at Sucre doesn’t make the list of things I’m thinking about.

What is on the list is Adam’s keep doing what you’re doing and all that implies.

“Something did,” Eli says with the confidence of someone who’s known me for more than a decade. It lights me up; I can’t help it. “What’s up?”

I hesitate before admitting, “That group at his house tonight was the one he and Grace got close to while I was in Seattle. It’s weird seeing your friends have other friends, and it made me feel far away again, you know?”

“I’ve lived three thousand miles away from everyone I love for years,” he says, his eyes steady on me. “So yes, I know.”

There’s an understanding in his voice that’s heavier than mine, and it unravels a realization: he must’ve sat on FaceTime calls where we were all here, seen pictures of events he couldn’t make it to, and felt like he was holding on to the people he cared about by a thread. All this time I’ve assumed that his job has kept him occupied, fulfilled in a way we couldn’t touch, that he was too busy to miss what he never came back to, but it’s clear it didn’t. Or that it lost its shine somewhere along the way.

What happened?

“So, is that why you’ve been so feral about making all this work?” Eli’s teasing voice interrupts my thoughts.

“Feral?”

He laughs. “You know what I mean.”

“You’ve been feral, too,” I say, pushing at his bicep with a fingertip. “Yeah, but you know why. I have something to prove.”

Maybe I do, too.

I don’t say it out loud; it sounds absurd. But I think he hears it anyway. The compassion in his eyes tells me so, reminding me that even though this new Eli isn’t like anyone I’ve known before, the layers of all the other Elis are still there, including the one who was my best friend. That version of him knows me well and understands exactly what bruise he’s poking at.

I let out a sigh. “When I got back to San Francisco a few months ago, so much had changed. Adam and Grace were in Glenlake, Jamie was settled down in Oakland. It’s become a lot harder to find time for each other. Before last Friday, I hadn’t seen anyone in over a month. And it’s not like I want to tell them to stop living their lives; I love that they’re all in love. I don’t begrudge Adam or Jamie for being busy or for things shifting while I was away.”

“Upheaval is a pretty rough rite of passage in your twenties,” Eli agrees.

“Exactly, but…” I shrug, looking down at the space between us, our knees nearly touching.

“But it still hurts to feel distant,” he says, that deep understanding echoing in his voice.

I nod, picturing the miles stretching between San Francisco and Seattle, wondering how I’ll bridge that gap. “Maybe I am a little feral, but I want to stay in Adam’s life. And Jamie’s too, of course. I don’t want them to leave me.”

It’s an old fear, rooted in my mom walking away. It’s a memory I can’t even recall, yet it has shaped my entire life. Even now, I can’t shake it off, and I hate that. I should be okay on my own, but I can’t help searching for that sense of belonging. Finding my place is so challenging—when I do, I might hold on too tightly, but it’s only because I know what it’s like to lose it.

Eli’s silent. I feel naked in all the wrong ways. “That sounds incredibly dramatic now that I’ve said it out loud—”

Suddenly, his hand wraps around my wrist. I blink up at him, my breath catching when I see his expression. It’s a fierceness that catches the Eli- shaped spark in my chest. A sadness that’s five years old.

It collars me around the throat, holds me in place as surely as his actual touch.

“Georgia.” He breathes my name, then stops. “You don’t have to—”

“I do,” he says, stepping closer. “Anyone who could leave you doesn’t deserve you in the first place.” He swallows hard, his eyes searching mine. “And I know for a fact that Adam and Jamie are smart enough to never let you go.”

It’s clear Eli isn’t just talking about them. It’s us, too, the way we left each other long before I left New York. It’s an apology without having to

say it, maybe, and it softens some jagged thing inside me.

There’s a question in his eyes now. A spark of resolve, like he’s going to open the box where our mess lay.

Keep doing what you’re doing, Adam’s voice yells in my ear, and it’s like being shoved in the back.

Eli inhales and I do, too, cutting him off. “I might go for a swim.” That spark banks itself at my graceless subject change. “A swim.”

“Yeah, a swim. The thing you’ve been doing nonstop in the pool out there, unless you’ve laid some claim to it.”

“You’ve had an open invitation every time,” he says, voice low. My stomach spirals. “You want some company?”

My knee-jerk reaction is to say no, only because of how badly I want to say yes. But then I hear it again: keep doing what you’re doing. This time it’s a suggestion, an item added to Adam and Grace’s wedding list.

We can exist in our halfway space that way, can’t we? Go for a dip together, celebrate our win and figure out how we’re going to tackle finding a DJ. Lean into the tentative friendship we’re rebuilding without stepping into the shadowed spaces of our past. Clearly we are onto something and Adam can tell. The superstitious part of me doesn’t want to mess with that.

And the other part of me is just hungry.

“Sure,” I say. Eli’s relieved-sounding exhale wraps around me. “Let me get changed.”

“I’m going to grab my suit from next door,” Eli replies. “I’ll see you in a few.”