Unfortunately, Julia was serious about Story Hour.

They’re late, of course, but just barely. I smell sun-warmed grass and the spicy kick of woodsmoke, and when I look up, they’re there.

Julia picks her way through the concentric rings of parents, babysitters, and kids, with Miles whispering apologies in her wake.

He’s shaved his beard. No doubt thanks to Julia’s badgering, which had peppered our conversation until late into the night when she accepted my fifty-eighth attempt to go to bed.

Some people grow beards to hide or accentuate certain features, the way I switched my hair-part at nineteen and, when I saw how it balanced my slightly crooked nose, never looked back.

The thing, it would seem, Miles has been hiding all along is that he’s diabolically handsome, with angular cheekbones and a jaw that sort of looks like it might cut you if you were to run a hand over it. Or your tongue. You know, whatever.

Fairly cruel timing, for us to have just agreed not to cross the platonic-friends boundary.

His eyes catch mine, and his mouth quirks—that part of him is still soft, playful, even with this new look. It makes me feel like I swallowed a sword inside of a helium balloon.

Under the best circumstances, surprises are not my thing. But if I were going to unexpectedly see the man I hooked up with the night prior, I would at least prefer it not happen (a) while I’m reading aloud and (b) on a day he looks better than ever and I decided to walk to work, during which a surprise drizzle frizzed my hair and raccooned my mascara.

I did my best to clean myself up after I clocked in, and of course it immediately stopped raining, but we’d stuck to an inside Story Hour, just in case, and I’m sure the buzzing overhead lighting isn’t exactly giving me a heavenly glow.

When I finally reach The End, Julia jumps onto her feet, clapping with extreme enthusiasm. Everyone else breaks into the polite applause I’m used to. After a chorus of squeaky voices saying thank you at their parents’ urging, the crowd disperses, and Julia bounds up to me.

“Miles wasn’t kidding,” she says. “You’re really good at the voices.”

I peek over her shoulder to where her brother has paused to “give directions” to a mom who I’m pretty sure was born here. A young mom—it seems he was right about the beard’s effect on the older ladies, because they’re not the ones eyeing him this time.

Julia follows my gaze and guffaws. “Oh, look, he made a new friend. How novel.”

“Has he always been like this?” I ask.

“As long as I’ve been around, yes,” she replies. “God knows where he got it from. Definitely not our asshole parents.”

I’m jarred by the casual mention of their parents. It’s like turning over a locked box, only to realize there was a crack in the bottom all along.

“Miles once bumped into the high school band teacher at the grocery store and left with an invitation to her wedding,” she tells me. “He wasn’t even in band.”

An image of crisp stationery, elegant typeface slanting across it, blossoms in my mind.

Julia’s face softens. “Shit, sorry. He told me about the invitation thing.”

“It’s fine,” I say.

Julia cocks her head, curious. “Really? Fine?”

“No,” I say. “But I’m trying to complain less.”

She catches me glancing toward Miles and snorts. “If you’re trying to emulate my brother, I wish you the best of luck. No one can repress negative emotions like him. He’s had too much practice.”

He looks, as ever, like human sunshine, totally engaged, completely interested in this stranger, and it makes my chest pinch. “I’d assumed the sunny disposition came naturally.”

“I mean,” she says, “we had the same upbringing and I didn’t turn out Chronically Fine, so I guess in a way, it’s natural. When I was a kid, and he’d moved to the city, he used to come back and pick me up every Saturday for breakfast at McDonald’s. I’d spend the whole time trying to get under his skin, because I was the worst. But I could never get a rise out of him. He’s excellent at ignoring the bad stuff.”

“What about you?” I ask.

Julia chokes over a laugh. “Oh, I invite the bad stuff to try to fuck with me.”

Having finally extricated himself from Hot Mom, Miles joins us. “What did I miss?”

“Nothing,” Julia says innocently, right as I say, “Your sister wants to get into a knife fight.”

“I’ll call Gill,” Miles says. “We can get her a kitten at the same time.”

“Am I missing something?” Julia asks.

Ashleigh sidles up then too. “Just one of their adorable best friend jokes,” she tells Julia. “You must be the sister.”

“You must be the friend I’m either going to love or hate,” Julia says.

Ashleigh’s shoulders wiggle, half shiver. “Intriguing.”

“Should be fun either way,” Julia says. “So should we all head to Cherry Hill, throw tiny pretzels at Miles while he’s working?”

“We don’t serve pretzels,” Miles says, audibly offended.

“As amazing as that sounds,” I say, “I need to get some promotional stuff finished for the Read-a-thon.”

“And I was thinking I’d do meal prep tonight, so I can be worry-free tomorrow—” Ashleigh interrupts herself with a gasp, looking to Miles. “I just figured out where we should go. We should take them to Barn.”

“Barn?” I say. “As in . . . a building on a farm?”

“As in a bar, in a barn,” Miles says. “On a farm.”

“There is no place on this earth,” I say, “like Waning Bay.”

“Barn has goats,” Ashleigh offers, peeling away from us to help a couple of patrons check out before we close for the day. “You’ll love it.”

Julia’s phone pings and she checks it. “Weren’t you supposed to be at work by four forty-five?” she asks Miles.

“Shit!” He moves toward the doors, Julia still texting as she shuffles after him. He turns over his shoulder and calls, “Sunrise is before six. Be ready at five thirty.”

“Five,” I counter. “Are you coming, Julia?”

“At five in the morning?” she says sunnily. “I’d rather eat aluminum foil. But you two have a blast.”

I creep out of my bedroom at four fifty-eight a.m., tiptoe past Julia, snoring on the sofa, to the kitchen, sandals in hand. I flick on the light beneath the mounted microwave and drink a glass of water while I wait for Miles to emerge from his room.

Five o’clock comes and goes.

Then five oh five.

Five eleven.

I’m trying not to be unreasonably grumpy, but this is fuck-everything early, even for me, and if there’s one thing I truly hate, it’s waiting on people.

Several dozen unhappy memories cycle through me, a worst-of film reel, and I’m too tired to adequately bat them away.

So while I’m yawning so hard my jaw pops, I’m also back in Mom’s and my first apartment without Dad, waiting by the front window, looking up every time a junker sputters past.

Waiting on the snowy curb outside my elementary school, dragging my boot toes through blackened slush, telling myself that if I count to one hundred, Dad will be here. And if not, then by the time I reach two hundred and fifty. Counting and waiting until my mom pulled up, stressed out and still in her work heels, apologizing through the open car window, on his behalf: Sorry, sorry, something came up, I guess.

Waiting at the mailbox for birthday cards to show up.

Waiting for a phone call on Christmas.

Waiting.

Waiting.

Waiting, for someone who rarely came, feeling worse every time, until finally, I realized that the feelings wouldn’t stop until the waiting did.