Page 26 of Friends to WHAT?!

“You see, dearheart? Even when men are the decent sort, they can be rather stupid. Doesn’t he know he’s supposed to be initiating more contact? Is he not aware of what’s happening here? He’s forced me into a damsel position, waiting at my window for him to come fetch me. It’s ridiculous.”

The organ in my chest yawns, unconcerned with my ramblings. She’s perfectly content to wait if it means we get tossed over a large, strong shoulder again.Perhaps next time he’ll declare himself in love with us, and we can live happily ever after,my silly heart yearns.

I roll my eyes.

My romantic core is once again at odds with my restless brain, not to mention all things universally hailed as sanity.

I stand and start pacing the aisles, running from the temptation of my phone’s keyboard and that teeny, tiny little purple send button.

I will not be messaging Wolfe Blackwood today.

Wolfe Blackwood will use his newfound abilities to initiate contact with me.

I will be patient so that Wolfe Blackwood can do what Wolfe Blackwood needs to do in order to slide a con into the pros column of whiteboard number four.

“I can be patient,” I declare, turning at an end cap full of large, Saturn-yellow crystal balls. “And I will be. Wolfe needs this opportunity to prove that he can do what he’s gotta do to be the man that he wants to be. I’ll support that. It’s in line with my whiteboards to support that.”

With several days distance from the new-project glow, my words lack some of the conviction they really should have.

A line of wind chimes sings as I pass them, running the tip of a finger over their dangling crystal strings.

“But maybe I could dosomething,” I murmur, rehanging the last in the row of chimes. Someone had picked her up, considered buying her, then put her back crooked. I fix her quickly as my gaze wanders, searching for inspiration—or distraction. Either would be welcome right now.

My eyes snag on a locally-bought ceramic mug full of gorgeous green pens. Beside them, a stationery set of emerald and jade sits, waiting for a pen to bring them to their full potential. I’d bought the pens first, sourcing them from a warehouse a few towns over, and the stationery I’d had hand-made from an enterprising young teenager who’s begun to specialize in producing recycled paper. When I stocked the items, I told myself I wouldn’t use them for myself unless Iabsolutelyhad to. I have a bad habit of buying stationery for theshop, then using it all up before customers can even peek at the pretty things.

I glance around the shop. “Well,” I say, “it’s not like there are any customers to do the peeking, are there?” And writing a letter to Wolfe isn’t intruding on his growth, is it? It’s simply the status quo. Which means I actuallydoabsolutely need the pretty green stationery, because the only letter-writing supplies I keep at the shop are ones that Wolfe has already seen a dozen times. That would have been fine in the before times, but now I know that he frames my letters and hangs them up on his wall as well-loved decoration. I can’t bear the thought of them all looking identical. How will he know which is which at a glance?

Decision made—for the sake of Wolfe, and not myself, obviously—I stride to the paper and pens. My soft, violet maxi skirt swishes behind me, and the bracelet Wolfe and Amia gave to me clinks against the thin gold bands surrounding it. The linen fabric of my skirt grazes the shelves and rock alike to the bracelet’s music, sliding easily past corners without snagging thanks to some very carefully placed adhesive foam.

When I reach the stationery, I pick out a jade pen, a pale forest paper pad, and an emerald green envelope. In a bout of incredible self-control, I leave the rest of the options where they lay in favor of raiding the basket behind my desk where I keep the letter supplies I have at the shop for when I don’t want to wait to be home to reply to Wolfe. I dig through it to find my white gel pens, my brown and green washi tapes, and every green sticker floating at the bottom that I can pluck out.

I plant my bottom back in my counter stool, spread my materials out in front of me and get to work respecting Wolfe’s journey while satisfying thedo something, anythingwithin me.

I turn up the shop’s music—a Spotify playlist curated during a particularly musical time in my life. Then, I take a deep breath, pick up my gorgeous new pen, and start writing.

And writing.

Andwriting.

I do believe I’ve acknowledged I’m a bit of a rambler, and my current state has me particularly prone to jabbering on. I have no clue what I want tosayin the letter. I only know that I want to write it. So Wolfe and I find out together what I’m going to say, and at first, it seems like it’s going to be a whole lot of nothing.

Eleven lines are dedicated to a compelling rendition of me seeing his mom and her power walking group when they passed my window this morning. Belinda waved, and her friend Vixie blew me a kiss. It was adorable.

I spend the next sixteen lines waxing poetic about the cinnamon rolls they carried, which leads into the next thirty or so lines, wherein I ask roughly a million questions about Amia and the state of her health—physical, mental, and emotional.

After interrogating the man about his beloved daughter, I transition to a full two pages of expressing how much our real life meeting meant to me and making it clear that I don’t want to lose the pen pal portion of our relationship as we navigate the newer aspects of our friendship.

Finally, this leads me to what I believe to be a fair bit of genius on my part. I write how excited I am about particular bits of my life that will be different now—namely, that I can stop avoiding Blackwood Brew, a veritable hub of activity in October. I drop, oh-so-casually, that in my non-avoiding, I will be at the Brew next Friday night.

It’s not an invitation. An invitation would be the opposite of giving him the space to take charge on his own. It’s simply… an opportunity.

A hint.

Anudge, if you will.

When I tuck the thick fold of pages snugly into their envelope and seal it, a zing of electricity alights just beneath my skin.

When I decorate the envelope with stickers and tape and a spare bit of lace I found wrapped around my stationery basket’s handle, that zing grows into a buzz.