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I stayed quiet and kept my arm around her.

Her eyes moved once across the screen.

Then again, slower.

Surprise came over her first, then caution. Then a strange softness I didn’t know how to read.

“You okay?” I asked quietly.

She let out a breath that sounded almost like a laugh, if laughter had edges.

“My mother got a job,” she said.

I looked at her.

“She says it pays well.” Zoey’s gaze dropped back to the phone. Her thumb hovered over the screen. “She thanked me for all my support over the years. And that she can take it from here.”

For a second, the noise in the room seemed to pull back around us.

Zoey read the message one more time. Her face did something small and complicated. Relief, maybe. Grief. Suspicion. Hope. I didn’t try to sort it for her.

I kissed her temple. “That’s good.”

“Yeah,” she said quietly. “It is.”

Her mouth curved, but only a little.

“I know.”

She stared at the screen for one more beat, then typed something quickly and locked her phone.

“What did you say?” I asked.

“Congratulations,” she said. “And thank you.”

I nodded.

That seemed right.

She looked around us.

Bobbi trying to steal Jamie’s darts.

Nora taking away Pete’s lighter before he could overcommit to the smoky garnish demonstration.

Mr. Harlan pretending not to laugh while Markie screamed “WEAK FORM!” at everyone in turn.

Her friends from the beginning of all this, loud and alive and still here.

She looked at all of it.

And when she looked back at me again, something in her face had gone open and quiet in a way I would always answer if she offered it.

“You were right,” she said.

“I know.”

“I hate that.”

I brushed a soft kiss over her lips. “No, you don’t.”

She took another sip of her drink and settled more firmly against me while everyone kept moving around us.

Outside, the leaves kept falling.

Inside, her party went on without crisis, without damage, without anyone asking her to hold the whole thing together.

She didn’t have to manage a single part of it.

She only had to be there.

And when she reached back and found my hand without even looking for it, I thought that maybe this was my favorite version of forever.