“Well, even before my breakup,” I tell her, “I didn’t have either of those things.”

“Because of the stick?” she jokes.

My own smile widens. “Because baby birds are never on time, and it may seem trite, but when people are always late, I don’t expect them to be reliable, and I definitely don’t assume they’re interested in being close with me.”

She nods thoughtfully. “Fair. But for what it’s worth, I’m always late because I have a kid. So I’d like to think my friends can rely on me, but if it comes down to it, yeah, I choose Mulder every time.”

If I’m a closed book, bound in chains and kept under a padlock, Ashleigh Rahimi might’ve said the one thing that could function as the key.

“Also fair,” I say.

“So,” she says. “Have I earned the origin story of this ‘joke’?”

“There’s something I haven’t told everyone at the library,” I say, buying myself time. “About my breakup. Something . . . humiliating.”

Her jaw drops. “You cheated with Miles.”

“What? God! No!” I look around for eavesdroppers. If I’m going to utter this aloud one more time, I’d like it to stay in this room. “How do I know this story won’t race through the stacks at work like wildfire?”

She has the grace to not look offended. Instead she purses her lips, considering. “Let me ask you this: Have I ever told you anything about Landon?”

“Other than that you two have a betting pool about what a freak I am?”

“Let’s just say,” she replies, “when you get him to pause his My Bloody Valentine album, you’ll find how easy it would be to make a full The Crown–style television series about his family. And yet you know nothing. I’m good with secrets.”

“You could be completely making this up,” I point out.

“Sure,” she says. “But I’m not. I’m a recent divorcée who spends most of her time with an eleven-year-old. I’m not out here telling people’s secrets. I just enjoy hearing about drama! Sue me!”

“If you divulge what I’m about to tell you,” I say, “I might.”

“I’ve got it!” she cries, slapping both hands down on the bar. She swings her huge purse atop it and digs for her phone. “I currently have a horrible rash on my back. I’ll send you a picture.”

“Please don’t,” I say.

“It can be your collateral,” she says.

“What if—and stay with me here—you just, like, tell me something about yourself?” I say.

“Hm.” She narrows her gaze. “Kind of an old-fashioned ‘actually getting to know each other’ approach.”

“Precisely,” I say.

“What do you want to know?”

“Whatever you want to tell me,” I say.

“Well.” She sighs, looking up at the exposed beams across the ceiling as she thinks. “My kid was conceived in a parked car behind a YMCA. Does that do the trick?”

A snort of laughter escapes me.

“Oh!” She scoots forward, more animated now than I’ve yet seen her. “In sixth grade, the tissue I’d stuffed in my bra fell out of my shirt while I was at the whiteboard.”

“Oh my god,” I say. “So you’re Dante. You went all the way to the ninth circle of the Inferno.”

“What else?” Her eyes tip toward the ceiling again. “Oh! When I first had Mulder, I had no idea what to do with him ninety percent of the time while Duke was at work. So I’d bring him to the library to this moms’ group, and I’d find the calmest parent in the bunch and ask if they could watch him while I went to the bathroom. Then I’d go lock myself inside, set a timer, and sob as hard as I could for five minutes.”

“Ashleigh! That’s heartbreaking!” I cry, but she’s laughing now too.

“It was terrible!” she agrees. “Every day I’d wake up and have, like, one second of peace. Then I’d remember, Oh, shit, I’m someone’s mom. I was a wreck, for like six months. But it did convince me to go back to school to become a librarian, and Mulder’s pretty much my best friend, so all worth it.”

My heart keens at the thought of my own mother. How, even with the long hours she pulled at work, she made time to hand-sew Halloween costumes and chaperone field trips and stumble her way through helping me with algebra. She worked so hard to give me the best life she could, and I don’t take any of it for granted.

I just always thought our family of two would grow, and someday I’d have a house full of little voices, deep laughter, endless love. I thought the Best Mom Ever would graduate to the World’s Best Grandma, and I’d give someone new the love she gave me, but with a different kind of life. A full house, where they didn’t spend most nights alone, waiting for their overworked mom to get home or a mostly absent father to deign to stop by.

“What do you think?” Ashleigh bats her eyelashes. “Have I earned some intel?”

I hold up a finger while I take a long sip of water.

“Oooh, she needs to hydrate,” she says. “Must be juicy.”

I set the glass down. “I’m going to say this fast, and I’d prefer not to dwell on it too long.”

“Got it,” she says.

“Peter dumped me for his childhood best friend, who happened to be Miles’s girlfriend, and that’s how we ended up living together,” I say all in one breath.

Her jaw drops.

I take another sip. “And then I accidentally told Peter that Miles and I are dating now, so we took that picture to make the lie more convincing.”

Ashleigh’s mouth forms a perfect circle. “You’re kidding.”

I hide my face behind my hands. “I’m not.”

“I love it,” she cries. Volume, I’m realizing, is Ashleigh’s primary indicator of emotion. That and the surprising bark-laugh that occasionally jumps out of her before she’s even cracked a smile.

“What do we love?”

I open my eyes to find Miles arranging wineglasses in front of us.

“Your fake relationship,” Ashleigh says.

“Well, I don’t,” I say. “Now there’s no good way to get out of it. I mean, when we ‘break up,’ Peter will get to feel smug and superior about that.”

“That’s no problem,” Miles says, pouring a taste of white wine for each of us. “All we have to do is get married, and then stay together until they split up. And if they have kids, just have one more than them. If they get a dog, we get a cuter dog. If they buy a new house, we get a mansion.”

“A perfect plan,” I say. “Why didn’t I think of it?”

He pushes the wineglasses toward us. “Pinot blanc. It’s crisp and citrusy, with a little bit of pear, and it goes well with poultry and seafood. I’m kidding about the marriage, by the way.”

“You don’t say,” I reply, taking a sip.

“What do you think?” He leans forward, eager, focused.

I let the taste roll across my tongue before swallowing it. “It tastes like springtime.”

He smiles. “Exactly.”

“I think there’s something wrong with mine,” Ashleigh says. “It tastes like wine.”

“Here.” Miles pours more. “Try again.”

Ashleigh sips, then smacks her lips. “Oh, yeah. Big spring vibe.”

Katya, with the curtain fringe, calls for Miles then. He glances over his shoulder. A middle-aged guy with slicked-back hair, eyes disappearing into his face, is drunkenly leaning across the bar demanding something of the bartenders.

Miles pushes off the bar. “I’ll be right back.”

He beelines toward the drunk guy, a calm and polite smile fixed to his face though something about his eyes has flattened out, changed. Like he’s peering out from heavily tinted windows.

Ashleigh angles toward me. “Do you think if I keep being ignorant, he’ll keep pouring more, or was that a onetime thing?”

I watch him exchange a few words with the man. Miles nods, then bends his head toward Katya’s, the two of them quietly conferring, her hands braced lightly against his shoulders as she pushes up onto her tiptoes to reach his ear.

They both glance our way at the same time, and I spin back to Ashleigh, downing my drink. “I think you can just ask for more,” I say, “and he’ll probably give it to you.”