THEO
Hey! Just double-checking that you’ll have the production schedule all set when we meet for coffee tomorrow? The network needs it ASAP.
THEO
Oh, and that possible crew list, if you’re still up for making it? Thanks!
She rolled her eyes and turned her phone over, so it was face down. When she turned back to Freddie, he was sitting up, his back against the wall where a headboard should be.
“Good morning.” He yawned, his expression still lax with sleep.
She offered him a small smile. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“Whatever I did that made you think you had to babysit me overnight.”
He gave her a weary grin. “You didn’t do anything. I escorted you home and you asked me to stay until you fell asleep. So I did.”
That’s right, she had asked him to stay. After she had talked to him about her old bedroom, her armchair, and… Spanish? The memory had still been sleeping somewhere inside her head, but now it was awake and loud and mortifying.
Her head fell into her hands. “Oh God.”
He chuckled to himself. “It wasn’t that bad.”
“I told you about my fake Instagram account, Freddie.”
“Yeah,” he replied, itching his jaw. There was a dusting of stubble there now. “I was going to wait until after coffee to ask you about that.”
She groaned. “Or we could just pretend I didn’t say anything and never speak of it again?”
He threw her a wry grin. “You know me better than that.”
She laughed softly, but then the full weight of his words settled in. She did know him better than that—or, at least, she used to. But now they kept finding themselves in this limbo of knowing everything about each other and not knowing each other at all.
The awkwardness felt thick now, and each passing second only added to it.
“I’m sorry, too,” he finally murmured, leaning forward to run his hands through his messy hair.
“What are you sorry for?” she asked.
“I don’t know how to do this, either.”
Her mouth pinched, trying to decipher what he meant.
He caught her expression and sighed. “I don’t know how to be strangers with you. But I also don’t know how to be just friends.”
Silence descended again. She wanted to tell him she knew exactly what he meant, that it felt so natural during moments like this, when for a second they forgot all the details that drove them apart.
“Freddie…” she whispered.
He stared at her in the dim light from the hallway, scanning her face, her mouth. She had the urge to just lean in, forget every concern she’d had over the past few weeks and…
Her phone pinged again from the nightstand.
Anne would have ignored it. She wanted to. But she knew Theo would only keep texting until he got a reply.
“Sorry, I have to just put this on silent,” she said, reaching forthe phone. But before she could flip the sound off, she saw the message now waiting on her screen.
