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“It really isn’t, Ma. But I do miss her,” I admit, because denying it at this point would be stupid when I’ve spent the last three days feeling her absence everywhere.

I miss Merry. I miss her so much, I’ve started noticing all the places in my day where I expect her to appear. The café door opening. My phone lighting up. The empty space beside me in bed when I wake up.

And I miss Primavera, too.

That’s the part I haven’t known what to do with. Whisp has been quiet for three days. No new messages and no jokes and no notifications that make me wonder what she’ll say this time. For weeks, I thought I was becoming attached to two women in two entirely different ways, and now both of them are gone at once.

“Then talk to her,” Fausto says, with the emotional maturity of, well, an emotionally mature man.

I look over at him. He has returned to his phone, as though this is obvious enough that it doesn’t require his full attention.

“It’s complicated.”

“Why?” he asks, still scrolling, eyes glued to his screen. “Does complicated mean you don’t want to talk to her?”

“No.”

“So then what does it mean?”

I open my mouth and not a single word comes out.

Fausto shrugs and looks back at his phone, satisfied that he has contributed all he intends to contribute to my emotional crisis.

He has a point, and I hate that he has a point.

Maggie is watching me now.

“You know what I was worried about when you told me about Merry?” she asks. Mamá stops what she’s doing in the kitchen again and turns to face us. Maggie purses her lips, and I feel a weight land in my chest, pressing on me and making it hard to breathe. “I was worried I was going to lose you again.”

There are sentences that don’t need clarification in this house, and this one is a perfect example.

Mamá and Fausto look at each other.

“I know,” I say.

“No, I don’t think you do.” Maggie holds my gaze. “I didn’t want to make your relationship with Alison about me, Flora. It wasn’t. But losing you while you were still technically my best friend really fucking sucked.”

I look down at the table. There is nothing I can say to that, because she’s absolutely right, and because I’ve already spent enough time picking through everything that happened back then to know exactly where I went wrong.

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you.” She says after a moment. “You’re still here.”

The words settle, nice and warm somewhere inside me.

I look around, at the table set for dinner and Maggie’s half-empty beer, at Fausto in our house even though he has a whole separate life away from here, at Mamá standing in the kitchen and smiling at me.

“I love her,” I say. “I really love her.”

“Yes,” Mamá says, blinking rapidly, and oh god, my mother is crying. “So what are you doing here?”

I laugh, because of course she would make falling in love sound like I’ve simply remembered I’m late for an appointment.

“Okay.”

I push my chair back.

Maggie looks up at me. “What are you— We haven’t had dinner yet!”

“Be right back.”