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Bo climbs in and immediately starts telling Wade, who followed us out for reasons that are entirely nosy, about our day at the park. Which buys me a second alone with Luke in the September sun beside my car.

“Thank you, for today.” He glances at Bo, then back at me. “You didn’t have to do any of this.”

“I wanted to.”

“I know. That’s the part that gets me.” He’s quiet a beat. His crew is fifty feet away, pretending not to watch. “We still need to have that talk, Olivia.”

“I know.”

I get home a little after six, after handing Bo back to Dottie, who returned from the outlet mall with three bags, a look of deep satisfaction, and a story about Ruth’s driving I didn’t have time to fully absorb.

Now I’m on my couch in the fuzzy socks, and I’m texting Luke.

I don’t mean to be doing it as much as I’m doing it. But he’s on shift until morning, and the texts have been coming all evening.

Luke

Today meant a lot, to him and to me. Mostly to me.

Olivia

It meant a lot to me too.

I’m looking at the message, deciding whether to say more, when the screen changes.

Incoming video call. Harper.

I answer, and there she is, too close to the camera as always, in her kitchen, Micah somewhere behind her.

“Okay. Update.” No hello. Harper does not do hello. “I have been very patient and very respectful of your process and I cannot do it anymore. Wrong number guy. Paul-who-wasn’t-Paul. Are you still friends with wrong number guy?”

And I pause.

It’s not a long pause. Half a second. But Harper has known me since we were nineteen, and half a second is all she needs.

Her eyes go enormous.

“Wait...” She grabs the phone with both hands and brings it right up to her face. “What was that. What was that pause. Olivia. What does that pause mean?”

“There was no pause.”

“That was the pausiest pause I have ever seen in my life. Something is happening with wrong number guy.” She gasps. “Are you dating wrong number guy?”

“I’m not...it’s...” I am, in fact, terrible at this. “We’re still figuring it out.”

“Figuring it out?” Harper is vibrating. “You don’t figure things out. You know things, or you don’t do them. If you’re figuring something out, it’s a thing. Tell me. What’s his name, where does he live, what does he do?”

I give her the smallest true thing I can find. “I ran into him at church, actually. And he’s, um. He’s a firefighter, so his schedule’s a little crazy, and...”

“A firefighter!”

Harper’s whole face changes. She turns from the camera and yells into the house, “Micah! He’s a firefighter. I bet he’s so hot.”

“Hey.” Micah’s voice, wounded, from off screen. “I’m not a firefighter and I’m hot.”

Harper vanishes from frame for a second. A smack, a kiss on a cheek, her voice gone soft. “Yes you are, baby.” Then she’s back, right up in the lens, all business. “Okay, he doesn’t count, he’s my husband. Back to the firefighter. How hot? Scale of one to ten?”

“I am not rating him on a scale.”