On Sunday, we go back to Traverse City with Ashleigh, for the end of the Cherry Festival. We wander the aisles of pop-up tents and food trucks, gorging ourselves on tarts and hand pies late into the night, and every time the Daphne Moan sneaks out, Miles’s eyes and mine seek each other out, the quirk of his mouth my own personal lightning rod.

And then I look away, because this is good. We are friends.

When we can’t stomach another bite, Julia demolishes us in a basketball carnival game, then talks us into riding the Spinning Cherries, from which we depart violently nauseous, cursing the cherry slushies we piled on top of everything else in our stomachs before boarding.

I check for job postings occasionally, but only for jobs I really think I might like now. Other children’s librarian or programmer positions in cities I’m at least interested in.

Julia decides to stay another week, and we use our Sunday for an elaborate farmers’ market shopping trip followed by a visit to an arcade bar, where once again she heartily and gleefully annihilates us, this time at Ms. Pac-Man.

Every night that week, we cook together—or Miles cooks, while Jules sits on the counter, curating a country playlist and singing along at top volume into whatever utensil her brother has most recently set down. I chop whatever he puts in front of me, wash whichever dishes he’s done with.

Most nights we eat on the floor around the coffee table, all the windows thrown open, the buzz of crickets and cicadas around us and the smell of fir wafting in, but sometimes we sit in a row on the couch, eating while we watch a spy movie or one about a heist, my veins humming every time Miles leans across me to grab a handful of popcorn or the remote, my heart clenching whenever our eyes catch in the dark.

Sometimes at night, from the other room, he texts me live updates as he listens to the audiobook of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, things like i want to live w the beavers and wat is turkish delight and edmund needs 2 chill. Sometimes we text for an hour straight, like our doors aren’t ten feet apart.

We’re basically always together, but we’re almost never alone, aside from once when he accidentally locked his keys in the truck and I had to bring his spare up to the winery.

I’m already in my pajamas, so he comes out to meet me in the lot, with a grin and a hug that smells like campfire and feels like a hook in my heart.

On Friday the nineteenth, I find out about the children’s librarian job in Worcester County, Maryland.

A quick online search tells me the Ocean City Library is twenty minutes from my mother and looks like an adorable lighthouse filled with books.

I almost text my mom, but something holds me back. It seems too good to be true. There will probably be dozens of applications, and there’s no point in getting my or her hopes up before I’ve even gotten an interview.

Still, I email them my cover letter and résumé on my lunch break, and check my email obsessively for the rest of my shift.

When I get home, I know Julia isn’t there.

I feel it like a barometric shift. Probably because I typically hear Julia before I see her. Less clear is how my nervous system knows Miles is here, even though his Crocs aren’t sitting next to the shoe rack, as is his custom, and it’s Friday night, when he usually works.

I hang my bags on the hooks by the door, kick my loafers onto the rack, and round the corner into the kitchen. He’s standing beside the stove, reading something on his phone with a divot between his brows as he waits for water to boil.

“So you finally shut your sister in the pantry,” I say.

He looks up, breaking into a smile. “She’s bringing up packages from the lobby.”

I lean back to peer out of the kitchen, toward the living room. Three large cardboard boxes already sit stacked beside the coffee table.

I feel a flurry of panic that I might’ve forgotten to cancel some expensive order for the wedding, and thus Peter has forwarded it here. A life-size marble statue of us embracing, maybe.

No recollection of ordering that, but who knows? I was in a wedding fugue state.

The water in the pot starts to burble, and Miles dumps hand-rolled trofie noodles into it. In the food processor beside him, I see what appears to be fresh-made pesto, and my salivary glands kick into high gear. “You hungry?” he asks.

“I’m fine,” I say.

“You’re drooling,” he teases.

“Is there enough?” I ask.

“Of course,” he says.

“Don’t you work tonight?” I call over my shoulder as I wander out of the kitchen toward the packages.

“Heading in right after this is done,” he calls back.

I scan the mishmash of shipping labels and find the sender’s name: Julia Nowak. An address in Chicago.

Then the receiver’s name: Julia Nowak, but with our address.

I pad back into the kitchen. “What are all these boxes?”

“No idea,” Miles says.

On cue, the front door flings open, and Julia crashes into the room with more packages. “Hey, Daph,” she says, bustling past.

I follow her into the living room, and she sets the boxes down with a huff. “What you got there?” I ask.

She passes me on her way back to the kitchen. “Just the essentials.”

I peek my head back in as she’s grabbing a sparkling water from the fridge.

“Essential what?” Miles asks.

She’s already squeezing between us to leave the room again, her voice growing fainter as she retreats to the cardboard treasure trove at the far end of the apartment.

“Whatever I can’t live without,” she calls. “Paid my roommate to box it up. Once I find a place, I’ll go back for the rest.”

Miles’s head snaps up from the pasta pot.

Our eyes lock. He shakes his head, a general I have no idea pantomime.

“It’s okay,” I say under my breath.

He shakes his head, calls loud and clear, “Jules? Come here for a sec.”

She pops her head back into the kitchen. “Yeah?”

“Quick question,” he says. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

With doe-eyed innocence, she asks, “What do you mean?”

“Why do you need more stuff,” he says. “Your stuff is already swallowing the apartment.”

“I told you I was thinking about sticking around longer,” she replies.

“Thinking about staying another week,” he says. “That’s what you said. A week ago.”

“Exactly. I’m going to stay for another few days. Then fly back to Chicago to pack up the rest of my stuff and drive it out here. But I needed my good clothes for job interviews, so I had Riley mail some stuff.”

“Job interviews,” he says.

“I’ll need a new job,” she says. “I can’t live with you forever.”

He runs a hand down his face. “When did you decide all this?”

“When I got here and realized you were in total denial about what you’ve just been through and you obviously need me.”

“Julia, I’m—”

“—fine,” she finishes with an eye roll. “You’re always fine.”

“I’m going to just . . . go in the other room,” I say, creeping away.

“No, don’t,” Julia says cheerily, already backing toward the front door. “Ashleigh’s actually double-parked downstairs waiting for me, so I have to run!”

She whirls out the same way she whirled in.

After a beat of silence, Miles and I look at each other.

“I’ll get her a hotel,” he says. “Or I’ll get you a hotel.”

“First of all, any hotel that will have a summer vacancy this last minute is not one I’m going to stay in,” I say. “And second of all, I can handle one more week of flat irons in the sink and bronzer on the floor.”

His brow lifts. “You sure?”

“Positive,” I say. “But how do you feel?”

He clears his throat and turns back to the noodles, scooping one out with a fork to test it before carrying the pot to the strainer in the sink. “I don’t know,” he says. “She’s still acting like everything’s normal, but I know my sister. She’s hiding from something, and she doesn’t usually hide.”