“Does she know you put in an offer on this place?”
Will’s lips curve up. “Zoe’s the one who sent me the listing.”
After a beat I admit, “Our relationship will always be different now. Hers and mine. I want to be her friend again, but I know it won’t be like it was before.”
He sits with this. One of my favorite things about Will is he never hurries to fill a silence during a loaded conversation. He speaks only when he’s sure of what he wants to say.
“Zoe’s different now. Just like you’re different. Just like I’m different,” Will says. “Of course it won’t be like before. Itcan’tbe. But that doesn’t mean you two can’t have a friendship that’s new and special.”
I nod against his shoulder, silently agreeing.
My relationship with Camila will change, too, now that she’s leaving Austin. Maybe this is all just totally natural—important people weaving in and out of your life but never making a permanent exit.
I can hold on to my memories of me and Zoe—reading books side by side at the Sea Island beach, giggling in the back of a classroom, screaming in the bleachers during a football game, whispering our self-doubts to each other from a shared bed—and I can greet her as an adult with our mutual hurt long overturned and buried.
I’ll tell her I’m in love with her twin brother. Butshemeant the world to me, too, and that happened first. They are two independent facts.
I will tell Camila I’m going to miss her so much—that it will feel like a part of my soul has been sliced off to be carried with her—but I know it’s time for her and David to go.
I don’t realize I’m crying until Will wipes at my cheeks wordlessly, then carries me upstairs to his bedroom and holds me. Neither of us speaks a single word. We hardly even make a sound, as if the silence could be cracked into sharp pieces if it breaks.
When I start to kiss him, he pours his care into the way he kisses me back. With every shiver of my body, every movement of his hands exploring my skin, it’s like he’s sharing my big emotions, giving them another place to live for a while.
“You are my girlfriend,” Will whispers to me as the sun rises the next morning. Light spills through his gigantic windows, cloaking us in a hazy warmth.
“I promise not to have a baby with your best friend,” I whisper back. My index finger pushes in against his dimple, memorizing the shape of it. “And I promise not to dump you because you don’t drink enough.”
“I promise not to move to Canada to play hockey,” Will whispers.
“I think Clay lives in California now.”
“I’ve always hated California.”
“You are my boyfriend,” I whisper to him. And whether Will knows it or not, those four words are actually code for I’m-head-over-heels-in-love-with-you.
We say it back and forth over the next couple of weeks as Will puts in his notice, transitions his clients to their new leads, and packs up his apartment to move to Austin. Every day, it means a little more. Because it usually comes at the beginning or end of a very real conversation about our grandmothers, our most embarrassing moments, our thoughts on Austin’s mayor, the pros and cons of living in Zilker versus East. My casual mention that I got on birth control. The embarrassment of our high school mascot in Nashville, Humboldt the Honeybear.
One day, the director of social media approaches me at work and says, “Does Will Grant still work for us?”
“Yes,” I say nervously. “Why?”
She holds out her phone. “He’s been DM’ing the Revenant account with, like, dog videos and food porn and something called the soft life aesthetic? Like, the type of stuff you’d send to your best friend or your significant other.”
I scroll through the messages, resisting a smile. “What’s the password?”
Marianne groans. “You can’t use the business account as your personal Instagram, Jo! Are youdatinghim?”
“That wouldn’t be advisable.”
“I’m not giving you the password,” Marianne threatens, grabbing her phone back.
“Why not?”
“Because the last time you logged on to the account you accidentally reposted a meme about hot delivery men.”
I blush, remembering that meme, then burst out laughing.
“Make a personal Instagram, dammit!” Marianne shouts at me as she walks away.
