“That or it got lost somewhere and she moved from this address before it reached her.”
“So, we’re all invested in this now,” I said, looking between them. Noah didn’t lift his attention from the letter, brow furrowing. Behind me, the door opened and Arden waltzed in, carrying two pizza boxes along with a smaller box on top.
“Antonio gave us free garlic bread!” she declared, kicking the door shut. “I was totally right about his thing for me.”
I perked up—I knew Antonio from Antonio’s Pizza was into Arden, but this was the first time his crush resulted in a freeappetizer. Meanwhile, Noah and Phoebe were too engrossed to notice.
“Man,” Noah said. “There is some serious groveling going on here.”
“Groveling?” Arden deposited the boxes on the kitchen counter, scrunching her face up in confusion. “What do you mean? What’d I miss?”
“We got a letter in the mail written by the dude who used to live in our apartment. Phoebe, being Phoebe, opened it.”
Arden’s eyes lit up and she veered for the sofa. “Ooh. Let me see.”
Checking back into reality, Noah glanced at me with a smirk. “Notice how she has no issue with the felony.”
“Opening someone’s mail is barely a felony,” she said, leaning over the back of the couch to get a closer look. Phoebe threw me a victorious smile. Anddammit, I couldn’t muster a lick of irritation; that smile was too nice to see.
“They were hoping we knew him,” Noah mentioned. “But Shawna lived there when we moved in, right?”
Arden nodded absently. I stood off to the side and rolled up the sleeves of my oversized flannel, watching as the three most important people in my life read and reread that letter with mounting interest. I mean, itwasinteresting. But it didn’t necessarily deserve more attention than hot pizza.
“That’scrazy,” Arden said, tearing her gaze from the letter. “That’s some true love shit. I don’t think Noah loves me that much.”
“I love you more,” he protested. “If we broke up, I wouldn’t write a sad letter. I woulddosomething.”
She ignored this and drew her phone out of her pocket. “We have to look this guy up.”
“Already did,” Phoebe said. I raised my eyebrows.
“You did?”
“Yeah, but there’s literally nothing.” She pushed up on her knees, leaning toward Arden to get a look at her phone. “See? No Benji Dexters. There are Benjamin Dexters, but no one in Boston. And all the ones I found are, like, elderly.”
“How do you know this guy isn’t elderly?” Noah asked. Phoebe rested her elbow along the back of the couch, twisting to face him.
“I found Catalina.”
I recoiled. “How?”
She waved this off. “Her social media is private. But you can tell from her profile pictures she’s pretty young. Late twenties, early thirties maybe,” she explained, her voice rising an octave from the excitement.
I stared at her, dumbfounded. “Whoareyou?”
Arden quickly tapped something new into the Google search bar. “Which one?”
Phoebe scanned the screen, then pointed. “Her.”
“Holy shit.”
“Right? She’s hot.”
“I wanna see,” Noah said. Arden shot him a look. “I mean, I’m also looking at a hot girl, so I don’t need to see.”
She turned back to her phone, shifting closer to Phoebe. “We should create a burner account and request to follow her.”
“I thought about it, but that might cross the line from curiosity to stalker,” Phoebe replied.
