Dirks couldn’t see me from the driver’s seat, but I still gave a little nod. He’d insisted on driving us back, leaving Jer and me to play his spoiled passenger princesses.
“I love you, Dirks.”
He dipped his head but kept his eyes steady on the road. “I love you too, Lune.”
A pause, then Jer mumbled under his breath, “Yeah, yeah. Me too.”
I grinned and leaned back against the seat. “God, you two are terrible at romance. Good thing I carry the whole relationship.”
Jer huffed out a laugh. “So... is this thing official now?”
“I don’t know. I guess we can... take it slow. Dirks’s family already knows, so... ”
Dirks flicked his eyes to me in the rearview mirror. “Are you going to tell Nova?”
“No. She’s busy with the wedding in a few months. We’re leaving for England and having something small.”
Nova didn’t need this right now. She deserved to have her wedding without the worry of wondering what I was doing, or who I was doing it with. She had her own fresh start to focus on, her own happiness to protect. The least I could do was not blow it up with my mess. At least not until after she walked down that aisle.
Dirks tapped against the steering wheel. “Are we going?”
I hesitated, then shook my head again. “No. Sorry. It’s just us. Ollie’s parents, Scarlette and... ”
Shit.
“Who is it, Lune?”
I groaned, tipping my head back. “Ugh, fine. Okay. It’s Will.”
“Oh, fuck me,” Jer groaned, dragging a hand down his face.
“It’s fine,” I rushed out. “I’ll be focused on the wedding, not him. Promise.”
Jer side-eyed Dirks, then huffed out a laugh. “Well, looks like I’ll be at your fucking house that week, making sure I’m not dying without her.”
Dirks barked a laugh. “You sure you don’t wanna cuddle instead?”
Jer swatted his shoulder, muttering a curse, and the car filled with our laughter as the city lights of Chicago pulled us closer.
“Speaking of stretching out with someone,” Dirks said once the laughter settled, his eyes catching mine in the mirror, “whenare you opening that yoga studio? You’ve been talking about it forever.”
“The next few months. Papers are signed, lease is mine. It still doesn’t feel real.”
Jer smirked, leaning back in his seat. “Great, so we’ll have our own personal instructor to keep us from pulling muscles when she rides us too hard.”
“Jesus Christ,” I muttered, but I was laughing again, shaking my head.
Opening a studio wasn’t only about yoga, it was about creating a space I’d wished for when I first started. Somewhere women who were curvy, like me, could roll out a mat without feeling like they didn’t belong. For so long, I’d walked into studios and felt like my body was wrong, like I had to shrink myself to fit in.
I leaned my head against the window, the glass cool against my cheek, and smiled. “It’s more than a studio,” I added quietly. “It’s a dream.”
It felt like a dream—not just the studio finally coming to life, but being between them, laughing like no time had passed. I’d missed this. Missedus. Jer’s smart-ass comebacks, Dirks’s deep laugh, the way they fell into sync even when pretending not to.
Back then, I tried to believe Will was enough. Pretended it, even. But he was never what I wanted, just a distraction from the ache they left behind.
Even oceans away, my heart hadn’t moved. It had always been theirs. There was no life with Will. No life with anyone else.
Only Jer’s chaos, Dirks’s steadiness, and me, the piece that made us whole.
