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Pru rolled her eyes. “Right, cause Pearl is so good at flings. Although, I can confirm the man is fit. Which, frankly, is unfair. A waste of good looks.”

Affronted, Pearl said, “I’m sure I could be good at a fling if I put my mind to it!”

The laughter grew louder at that. Sofia held Pru’s hands between her own. “The point of a fling, love, is to not put your mind to it.”

Pru cackled, and clapped her oven mitt covered hands to get their attention. ‘Alright, that’s enough talk of men. We’ll never pass the Bechdel test at this rate.”

Throwing a crouton at Pru, Hannah protested. “You don’t get to decide when we stop talking about this. I want to hear more about Corvus. What’s he like now, Pearl? Still a poncy git?”

Pearl smiled. “Of course. But also, I don’t know. It seems like he’s grown up in a lot of ways. It seems like…” She tried to put words to the feeling inside her. “It seems like maybe he wants to be better than the way he was raised.”

Aashvi rested her face on her hand, and looked thoughtful. “Do you think he can accomplish it?”

Sighing, Pearl threw up her hands. “I don’t know. I think we’ll just have to see if it’s all just words.”

Pru set the muffins down with a bit more force than was required. “Ok, now can we talk about something else?”

“You’re not the conversation police, Prudence. Maybe Pearl needs to talk about this.” Hannah was one of the only ones in their friend group who had no fear of tangling with Pru at all times. Sometimes Pearl felt like they were only a few words away from both women removing their earrings, but they truly loved each other, so it never went that far.

Shooting a look at Hannah, but letting the matter drop, Pru turned to Pearl and spoke with believable sincerity. “Would you like to talk about this? I guess I was getting the feeling that you didn’t?”

Pearl let something out that was halfway between a laugh and a cry. “I honestly don’t even know. I’ve been loving the work, and Corvus has been…Corvus has been…” tears started to stream down her face.

Her friends (and Mercutio) flew into action. Aashvi drew her into another hug, while Sofia stroked her hair. Mercutio curled up in her lap to give her comfort. Pru said, “I’m gonna go over to his house and punch that smug twat right in the face” at the same time that Hannah was apologizing for saying he had aged like fine wine. “I bet he’s ugly as that old man down the street from me who lets his dog poop in our yard and leaves it.”

Truly laughing through her tears now, Pearl said, “I love all of you so much. No, Corvus has been lovely. I think that’s what scares me to be honest. It was so easy to fall in love with him the first time - it would be so easy to do it again.”

Aashvi gave her a gentle smile. “You need to trust yourself, Pearl. You’ll know what to do, and we’ll be there with you every step of the way.” Looking up at Pru and Hannah, she corrected. “We’ll be there with you some steps of the way so these two don’t murder him before you make a decision.”

Waving her hands over her eyes in an attempt to dry them faster, Pearl shooed her friends back to their places at the table saying, “Ok, we can honor Pru’s wishes now and be done with Corvus for the night. Tell us about baby Evelyn, Hannah?”

“I was holding her right before the sitter arrived just admiring how absolutely adorable she is, and I almost caved and canceled the sitter when Evie spat up on my gorgeous new top, which thankfully broke me out of my cuteness trance.”

Pru shuddered, “Why you voluntarily chose to have children, I’ll never understand.”

Patting Pru on the shoulder, Sofia said, “But just think, Pru! You get to be an aunt, which is arguably the very best job. I’m so glad my brother had kids and entirely took the pressure off of me to give my parents grandchildren. So now, I get to spoil them and send them home.”

Hannah, used to Pru’s aversion to children, said, “You mean you don’t want your feet to grow a half size, pop a human out of your vagina, and not be able to sleep for at least a year? Don’t you see the appeal?”

Pearl asked Aashvi about how her research on magical methods of improving crop growth was going, and Aashvi caught them up on how they’d seen some success in reducing the amount of nutrients that were depleted from the soil from continuous crop growth. Pearl said, “I should have gone into that field. My family would have been ever so proud I did something genuinely useful rather than breaking curses on books no one wants to read.”

Aashvi made sure to share her disapproval with Pearl’s family’s inability to recognize her contribution to society, but she also requested her father’s contact information. She wanted to work with magical farmers before they started trying to figure out a way to integrate it into the non-magical communities. Part of the issue they were running into was that it would be difficult to make the magic subtle.

Pearl went home feeling happy and whole and loved, but also that maybe her friends had too much faith in her. Would she know what decision was the right one? She’d been so confident years ago, and she’d been so very wrong. And anyway, she was making a lot of assumptions about Corvus’ feelings for her now. Maybe he really did just want her to cursebreak his library. Maybe he was trying to right the wrongs of the past. Maybe she’d finish with the library and they’d both go their separate ways with warm but entirely platonic feelings for each other.

As these questions chased around each other in her mind, her phone lit up with a text from Corvus.

Corvus: I know this is a bit last minute, but I wondered if you would be interested in joining me on a small trip to Paris on Monday? There is a book I’m interested in acquiring I’d love to have your expertise on.

He was rather good at coming up with things that were very difficult to turn down. But still, it was just business. He wanted her to come in an official work capacity.

But then another text came through.

Corvus: And if I may be so bold, there’s this lovely new cafe I’ve been wanting to try. We could grab dinner there after business is concluded if you’d like.

Pearl set her phone down. Ok. So maybe he was interested in something outside of a business relationship. But what? He’d said all she was to him all those years ago was a fling. Did he still want that? Did she? It felt so degrading somehow - coming back to someone who had cast you off just to pick up with them again almost ten years later. But could she be the one who did the casting off this time? Did she have that kind of pettiness in her? She knew at least Pru would be proud if that’s the route she chose.

When she picked up her phone again, another text was waiting for her.