Page 16 of Friends to WHAT?!

“Don’t apologize,” I tell him. “Just… tell me what’s going on. From the beginning, preferably. I can’t say that we’re one hundred percent cool at the moment, Wolfe, but I don’t understand what’s happening right now. You’ve never come off in your letters as the sort of person to take a ‘no’ and blatantly disregard it.”

“I’m not,” he replies. “I’m really, really not.” His shoulders rise and his chest expands before he exhales with a groan.

“The beginning,” I repeat. “I’m lost, and I need the map you followed to get here.”

A loose strand of white hair bounces over his forehead when he nods, and I let my focus stay on the soft fall of it settling against his skin as he takes us to the start of a dotted line that will lead us to the big, giant X.

“Poem’s house flooded,” he says.

My eyes dart to his as my eyebrows furrow. “You kidnapped me because Poem’s house flooded?” I ask. I’m interrupting, and I know I shouldn’t, but…he kidnapped me because Poem’s house flooded?

“No,” he answers. “Well, yes, but also no. It will make a modicum of sense as I go?” He leans back to sit on his heels. His hands fist and unfist against his knees, anxious energy begging for a release.

I grant it one.

“Oh-kay. Go on, then. I will keep my lips zipped for the rest of the trip.” I press my mouth as closed as it’s ever been.

Wolfe’s eyes soften, but his hands still flex a nervous rhythm. He clears his throat. “Poem’s house flooded,” he repeats. “Really bad. It’s fixed now, but she had to stay with Fox for a while. While she was there, their… whatever it is they had going oncame to a head. It brought up a lot of Fox’s insecurities that I knew were there, but I’d been hoping would resolve themselves with time.” He shakes his head and scoffs. “I’ve learned my lesson, now. Time doesn’t fix anything. Attention, love, and facing the big, scary thing head on is what fixes things. I didn’t give Fox any of that, even though I knew he was struggling, and I should have. I should have done so much more for him. I found him banging his head against every available surface in his office a few weeks ago, and even then, I didn’t help him. I just took him to Poem like some kind of drop off service.Here, I found this man in emotional distress. Can you take care of that for me?” His fists unclench to allow for digging his blunt nails into his jeans. “Poem waslivid, as she should have been. Here’s my brother literally beating himself up over how worthless he feels and I didn’t even try to take care of him myself. It was disgusting. Him being in so much pain in the first place was disgusting when you know that I could have donesomethingto prevent it. But I didn’t. I sat around, passively watching and worrying while my brother got worse and worse, and then, in the end, I still wasn’t the one who aided him in starting the process of healing. Poem was.”

His eyes darken, helpless self-judgment melting into a determination that sends my stomach fluttering. “I made a vow to myself after they got engaged. No more passive Wolfe. No more watching people I love struggle. No more hoping and wishing and praying for the things I want in life when I could take a little bit of action to make them happen. I could have made my brother happier, and I regret every second of every day that I wasn’t brave enough to do it. So I took a minute, and I thought of other ways I was being passive in my life, hoping and wishing and praying for better, and I thought of… you. I thought of all the joy you bring me, and all the joy you bring Amia, and all the longing we both feel to bewithyou. We love you so much.Your letters brighten our lives. Your existence makes ours better. Amia asks me constantly if we can meet you, and I’ve always told her no. Not yet. Eventually, maybe, but not anytime soon. Passively enjoying whatever gifts of paper and pen you would send us, longing for more, but lacking the courage to ask for it.

“So I held one of your letters in my hand, and I thought of my brother and Poem and my daughter and all the ways my cowardice has affected them, and I pulled out my phone and I asked a scary question.” He takes a fortifying breath. “And I got no answer. Until I did, but then… well, Almond had convinced Amia that kidnapping wasromanticand Amia offered it up as a solution for my problems. I saidno, absolutely notas I tucked her into bed, then I went down to the bar to ask Sterne to remind mewhykidnapping is ano, absolutely not. I’m not proud of it, or anything that followed, because Sterne didn’t tell me no. Instead, he dragged Almond the Insane into the conversation and the two of them strong-armed me into thinking it wasn’t as insane of an idea as I thought. Until, you know, we got into the alley by Hunter’s Moon and I found my sanity again, at which point they literally shoved me through your door.” His nose wrinkles. “And then you were there for the rest.”

I definitely was there for the rest. That is undeniable. Very there.

I blink at the man on his knees before me, then I pinch myself. Then, for good measure, I pinch him.

“Ow!” he grunts, rubbing his forearm.

“This is reality, then,” I murmur, brows furrowing. “What absolute ridiculousness.”

“I know it sounds far-fetched,” Wolfe says, leaning so far forward he hovers over my lap, puppy-dog eyes begging me to believe him. “But it’s the truth. I’m not a bad person. I’m just a little dumb, a little selfish, and a lot cowardly. I need a backbone and a group of people more morally adjusted around me, butI don’t mean any harm, and I especially do not ever mean any harm toyou.”

“Shut up,” I mutter, narrowing my eyes at the genuflecting man. “I need to think. For a moment.” Then, truly breaking the universe, I sit silently for multiple consecutive minutes while I do just that. My lips do not move. My mouth does not jabber. I think my thoughtsinsideas I process them, a brand new experience I hope to never have again.

How do peopledothis? The words and the sentences and the half-formed maybe-thoughts crawl all over each other, jumping and skipping through the spare spaces left between flitting contemplations.

In the end, two thoughts ring louder than the rest, trumpeting above all others to demand my attention.

Firstly, Amia is on track to one day join book club—a thought as terrifying as it is thrilling.

Secondly, the series of events as presented to me by Wolfe are so ridiculous as to be regarded as only one thing: the truth.

Wolfe is telling the truth. Meaning…

WolfeisReal Man, but not in the way that Real Men usually are. Wolfe needs fixing, but he doesn’t need reformation.

I hum as my head tilts, and I consider the man before me. The background chatter of my brain quiets, then silences, and the back of my mind fills with anticipation as we all wait to see what I will do next.

I am not a woman who believes that I can fix a man. You’ll never hear the words “I can fix him” pass through my lips. Not again. I used to believe such a folly. I used to see the world with big, naive eyes, and useless men with a rosy hue. Those days are past, though. I’m wiser now. Smarter. Less willing to hand my heart to a fixer-upper and hope they treat it right or, worse, hand the silly thing to a man who takes it before he shows mehis cracks and crumbling foundation. I was born with my heart already belonging to such a man, and I refuse to die the same.

Am I a woman who thinks she could drag an already good man into being a better one, though?

Could I, Leora Mouton, push a man until he becomes not only who he claims he wants to be, but until he becomes whoIwant him to be?

A surge of feminine power flushes through me. The heady weight of it makes my breaths heavier as my eyelids droop.

Oh, yeah. I could push a man.