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Frankie scoops up her cat with one hand and places him on the couch next to me, as if she knows what I need, and he hesitantly settles in. “When your dad died and everything with Henry imploded, you were like a ghost. I get it, and it was fair at the time, but you just shut down entirely. I put in the work because I knew you needed me, even if you couldn’t express that. I wasn’t going to allow you to cut me out too. I watched so many terrible rom-coms for you. I hate rom-coms.”

“You’re trying to be a wedding planner. How can you hate rom-coms?” I gasp.

Frankie rolls her eyes. “I don’t have to be a romantic to be a smart businesswoman. The point is that I did it for you. I initiated every text to hang out. I sat at home with you. I dragged you out for bowling so our other friends wouldn’t forget you existed whenever you wanted to participate again. It’s fine that it never happened. Who cares about high school? But you would have run away from me too, Norah. I just didn’t let you.”

She takes a sip of coffee and Monsieur shifts so his back is now to me. I’m sure Frankie’s recollection is real, but I blocked out most of the rest of senior year. All I remember is locking up all my vulnerabilities and storing them far away so no one could have the power to make me feel that way again. Since I was seventeen, that’s been my default. Between my dad’s death and Henry’s humiliation, it seemed like the only way to protect myself.

“You’re doing it again,” Frankie continues, “and this time, I don’t know how to stop it. I can’t make sure you’re leaving your apartment from eight hundred miles away. It’s infinitely easier for you to disappear under these circumstances, and I really need you not to do that. You know I hate mush, but you’re my best friend. You have to let the people who love you…love you. I love you. Hannah loves you. A certain someone we’re not going to mention also loves you,” she adds pointedly. “Monsieur, on the other hand, does not care for you. But he hates almost everyone. He takes after me.”

Things get lighter after that. We finish our coffee, and talk nonsense, and her cat continues to ignore me. As I get ready to drive back to Laketon before the traffic gets too bad, my touch-averse best friend pulls me into the tightest hug, and I promise her that I won’t run.

Chapter 27

I get back to the house after seeing Frankie and feel drained but lighter. Since my room is finally clear, Mom and I finish packing up the kitchen too, the boxes that will travel to the condo I’ve chosen not to visit on this trip. I’ve promised to return to Chicago in February for their engagement party, and by then, I have to assume I’ll be feeling more settled.

For my last night, Hannah, Mom, and I stay up late, drinking wine from Mom’s celebration collection. We share memories about the house, about Dad, and for the first time in weeks, my tears come from laughing too hard at Hannah’s recollection of Dad failing miserably as the Tooth Fairy.

I finally go upstairs to bed, much too late for my eight a.m. flight back to New York, and notice something on my pillow. A stark white envelope, the flap tucked inside the back, not sealed. My name across the front in Henry’s block print, unchanged after all these years. I slide the envelope open and carefully remove the folded sheets of paper, finding a classic yellow Post-it over the first crease.

I still mean every word and more.

At the top of each page, there’s the swirling logo of the chain hotel we stayed at during that fateful New York trip. I run my finger along the crisp edges as I unfold the thick stack of paper, pressing it flat on my leg. The black ink is still sharp as ever on the page. I take a deep breath and start to read.

Dear Norah,

I messed up. I messed up so badly. If I could rewind the last thirty minutes, I would do everything differently. Maybe the last hour—then I wouldn’t have had all that beer, and my head wouldn’t be spinning so much as I write this. I just panicked. I was caught off guard.

Because here’s the truth.

I’ve been in love with you since we were twelve. Probably even before that, before I knew what that word, those feelings, what being around you was to me. Meant to me.

Do you remember our first party in middle school at Julia Schmidt’s house? Everyone was spinning that empty Cherry Coke bottle around on the floor of the unfinished basement, but I could only look at you. You had this watermelon lip gloss on. I smelled it in the car when your dad drove us over there, and something just hit me. I couldn’t stop staring at you. So I got out of the circle, said I wasn’t feeling well, but the truth was, something didn’t feel right to me. And then Kevin Chen’s spin landed on you, and you seemed nervous, but you smiled at him, and you were so cute and hopeful, I couldn’t take it. I wanted to push Kevin aside and be the person you looked at like that. I knew neither of us had had our first kiss yet, and it felt so monumentally wrong for it to be with anyone else. But you kissed him, and then you giggled, and you kept touching your lips. A normal guy would have just sat back down in the circle, taken the odds, and evened the score, but I didn’t want to do that. That night unlocked something inside me. I only wanted you.

I can’t believe Kevin Chen ruined another chance for me to kiss you. I know I’m the one who stopped it, but you have to understand, Norah. I didn’t want it to happen like that. When I kiss you, I don’t want it to be part of a game. I don’t want either of us to have any question about what it means.

You’re my favorite person of anyone I’ve ever known. We’ve been best friends for as long as I can remember, and I never wanted to mess that up, but God, it’s been brutal loving you for so long and never being able to tell you how I feel. Because I never thought it was possible that you felt the same way. But you wouldn’t have reacted the way you did if you didn’t want to kiss me too, right? I don’t think that’s just the beer talking. I think you might want this exactly as much as I do.

Last year at homecoming, you tapped on my shoulder during a slow song, and I swear I stopped breathing. I thought this was going to be the moment, our moment, where everything finally fell into place.

But then you asked if I would dance with Ashley Majors.

I thought it was a joke. I actually might have said that. I can’t remember because I think I blacked out for a second. It felt surreal. I wanted to touch you. Hold on to you. If you’d ever thought about me the way I always thought about you, you wouldn’t have asked me to dance on another girl’s behalf. That felt like the final straw of the Friend Zone. And I was okay with that, honestly, because I can’t imagine my life without you, and if that was just as friends, I’d be the best friend you’d ever have, Norah. I would do anything for you.

You’re witty, you’re smart, you’re sharp, you’re funny. You’re so pretty that there are times where I look at you and suddenly I feel like I’m going to burst if I don’t tell you, or kiss you, right then and there.

In case you couldn’t tell, I’m dying to kiss you. I probably shouldn’t tell you this, and maybe you already know, but it will be my first. I’ve just never been able to see a world where it isn’t you. But it’s more than that. I want to hold your hand. I want to put my arm around you when we’re watching a movie instead of sitting two feet away and staring at you the whole time, inching my arm toward yours in the hopes that maybe our fingers would brush together. Norah, I haven’t actually watched one of our movies in so long.

I’m sorry about how I handled tonight. I shouldn’t have let you walk out of this room. I shouldn’t have let another minute go by without telling you exactly how much you mean to me. I was being dumb, that’s all. But tomorrow we’re going to interview at NYU and I know we’ll both nail it. And then next fall, we’ll be together, here, in this place we always dreamed about. We’ll figure this out, I promise. I think this could be so good, you and me. You’re the person who knows me better than anyone. And now I won’t be carrying the deep dark secret of my feelings, so you’ll really be able to know all of me, the way I’m dying to know all of you.

I’m going to give you this letter after your interview, when I go in to do mine. And afterward, we’re going to walk around campus, where we’ll spend the next four years, and I’m going to take your hand, and kiss you. Then, when we get back to Laketon, I’m going to take you on a date (just not bowling—I want to impress you and not get slaughtered). Because I love you, Norah, and I want to be with you.

Nothing is ever going to change that. Nothing could change the way I feel about you. I need you to know that. Just don’t push me away. Don’t give up on us.

Love,

Henry

I finish the letter and immediately turn it back over and read it again. A tear drops from my cheek, blurring out a few words, and I scamper to dry it off with a tissue, to preserve everything he put on paper so long ago.