I clear my throat. “That’s up to you.”

“And I’m asking you,” he parries, his smile slightly mischievous but his gaze dark and heavy enough to pinion me to the spot.

The moment feels like a held breath, or a soap bubble, something that can’t last, that has to break one way or another.

And then it does. The song ends, and Julia barrels back toward us, baby bangs stuck to her forehead and mascara ringed around her eyes. “Who’s up for a shot?” she asks, and Miles steps back from me.

“I’ll get them,” he volunteers, and breaks away through the tightly packed crowd, casting one last glance over his shoulder, a hazy look that makes me feel like a Christmas present he’s one sleep from unwrapping.

“Are you and Miles sleeping together?” Ashleigh asks at the bao bun food truck on our lunch break on Monday.

I’d just taken a sip of lemonade and reached out to accept my receipt from the cashier, and I barely manage to avert my face before spit-taking.

“Ashleigh!” I chide, pulling her away from the counter.

“What?” she says. “That guy’s, like, sixty. I don’t think we’re going to surprise him.” She adds thoughtfully, “Unless of course he’s also sleeping with Miles.”

“I’m not sleeping with Miles,” I tell her.

“Okay, fine. I must’ve misread the signals.” Her tone makes it clear she doesn’t believe it.

The cashier calls our respective receipt numbers, and we grab our food from the counter, then walk toward the picnic tables on the grassy knoll overlooking the public beach.

“One time,” I admit. “Something happened, once.”

A smile spreads across Ashleigh’s pink-painted lips. “I knew it. Tell me everything.”

“There’s nothing to tell,” I say.

“That bad?”

“No,” I say a little too emphatically. At her smug grin, I add, “I just mean, I’m not even sure how it happened.”

“Well, you’re still ahead of me, because I don’t even know what happened.”

“We just made out a little bit,” I say.

“In what context,” she says.

“At home,” I say. “We were watching a movie and, I don’t know, it just happened.”

“What were you watching?” she asks.

“Does it matter?” I say.

“It sets the scene,” she says. “Honestly, Daphne, have you never had a close friend before?”

The last conversation I had with Sadie drifts through my mind like acrid smoke. But strangely, I also feel a slight lift in my stomach at Ashleigh’s implication that that’s what we’re becoming: close friends. “Not in a while, no,” I tell her.

She grabs my elbow. “You know it’s not like my social well is overflowing these days either. I just meant, it’s supposed to be fun to rehash all this, not embarrassing. This is a judgment-free space. We’re twenty yards from the library, for god’s sake. Yesterday I had to ask a guy to stop leading wild pigeons inside with a breadcrumb trail.”

“Again?” I say.

“Not Larry,” she replies. “Different guy.”

“Well, I didn’t have to entice Miles with breadcrumbs,” I say.

“Always a good sign,” she says.

“We were watching a Fast & Furious movie,” I spit out.

“Which one,” she asks immediately.

“I really couldn’t tell you. One with Vin Diesel in it.”

“Would make anyone horny,” she says. “And, what, it was weird?”

“No. It was . . .” I tamp my voice down, lest the food truck operator decide to lean in. “Weirdly good.”

“What’s weird about that?” Ashleigh says. “Miles is hot.”

“It’s weird because I haven’t kissed anyone but Peter in, like, five years, and I didn’t think when I finally did, it would be my ex-fiancé’s new fiancée’s ex-boyfriend.”

“When you put it like that . . .”

“Anyway, we agreed it was a huge mistake,” I say.

“Really?” she says. “Why?”

I shrug. “I mean, for every conceivable reason. We live together. We’re both just getting out of long-term relationships.”

She rolls her eyes. “You don’t have to dive into anything serious. I finalized my divorce over a year ago, and I have yet to make it to a third date with anyone.”

“No, I know that,” I say. “It couldn’t even be serious, since . . .”

Her eyebrow sharply arches. “Since?”

I heave a sigh. I wasn’t going to tell anyone from the library about this until things were more definite, but Ashleigh’s my friend now. I owe it to her. “I’m looking for a new job.”

She stares at me, like she doesn’t understand. “You’re obsessed with your job. Sometimes I catch you just staring at spreadsheets like they’re winning lottery tickets.”

“Okay, that’s a bit of an exaggeration,” I say, “but yes, I love my job. It’s the town I’m less sold on. I mean, I like it as a town. But I only moved here for Peter. My mom’s on the east coast, and . . . I don’t know. I’m just not sure I can hack it here. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.”

She shakes her head, sets her bao bun down. “Look, I get it. We’re adults. We have to do what’s best for ourselves. It sucks for me, but I get it.”

“Thanks, Ash. Really.”