My throat tightens in a way that’s familiar and annoying. “Yeah.”
“And,” she adds, voice suddenly bright again, “I’m stopping by.”
I blink. “What?”
“I want to see you. In real life. With my eyeballs. No time zone math. No glitchy Wi-Fi.”
My pulse picks up. Not panic, exactly. More like my brain switching into logistics mode. Clothes. Space. What if my room smells weird? What if I say something awkward? What if I’m tired, and she can tell?
“Wren—”
“Before you start spiraling,” she cuts in gently, “I’m not asking you to host a party. I’m asking if I can stop by and hug you.”
I swallow, the simple honesty hitting me harder than it should.
“Okay,” I say.
She ignores me. “So…when do I get to meet him?”
I can’t help the smile that spreads across my face. “I don’t know. Nothing’s been made official or anything like that.”
“He got you off in an announcer’s booth at the hockey rink with your brother in the next room. I’d say that counts.”
Blushing, I hide my face in my pillow, as if that will change my best friend’s lack of filter.
“And you,” Wren says, voice more careful now, “like him.”
It’s not a question. It’s her reading me the way she always has, even when I try to edit myself. My throat tightens. I look at the wall across my room like it might offer a safe answer.
“I…” I start, then stop.
Wren doesn’t push. She waits. And that’s what makes it harder, because she isn’t cornering me. She’s giving me room to choose the truth.
“I feel…safe around him,” I admit finally. “Calm. It’s honestly probably the best I’ve felt since everything happened. I can’t really explain it. I just feel this pull to be around him and to get to know him better.”
There’s another pause on the line, softer this time.
“Oh,” Wren says quietly. As one of the few people who saw me in the after phase, she knows the impact my words carry, even if they seem simple enough.
Trusting someone is hard for anyone, but once you’ve been hurt the way I have, it makes it even harder.
“Yeah,” I whisper.
Then Wren clears her throat and snaps back into brightness like she refuses to let the moment get too heavy for me.
“Okay, cool,” she says briskly. “So, I’m going to stop by on Tuesday after I sleep a shit ton, hug you, and then I’m going to meet him.”
I choke on nothing but air. “What?”
“Relax,” she says. “Not like an interrogation. I just want to see the face of the man who made my best girl feel safe.”
My stomach tumbles in a way that’s part nerves, part something warm and stupid.
“You can’t just?—”
“I can,” Wren interrupts. “Because I missed the last nine months of your life in person, and I’m making up for lost time. Also, I brought you gifts.”
“That is bribery.”
