Chapter
One
RACHEL
The first night in my Paris apartment smelled like garlic, cheap red wine, and the very specific kind of fear you get when something you’ve wanted forever finally shows up and asks you what you’re going to do with it.
I kept thinking:This is it. This is the beginning.
And also:Oh God, I’m not ready.
Frankie was barefoot in my kitchen like she owned the place. Which, technically, she did. She’d kicked off her boots by the door, hair twisted up with a pencil because she couldn’t find a hair tie—classic—sleeves rolled, already halfway into reorganizing my drawers like muscle memory had taken over.
“You put the knives in the wrong spot,” she said, peering into a drawer.
“It’smywrong spot,” I said, pouring wine into two mismatched glasses we’d found at a flea market that morning. One had a crack in it. It gave it character and felt honest.
“You’ll thank me later.” She grinned.
That was kind of our whole relationship in one sentence.
The apartment itself still felt like a borrowed coat. Exposed beams. Tall windows that let in the kind of Paris light everyonelies about—soft, gray, cinematic. Downstairs were three empty studio spaces and two other apartments that Frankie labeledincome potentialthat I kept callingterrifying. One of them was already earmarked in my head for a darkroom. A real one. Not the half-assed bathroom setup I’d been hacking together since I discovered I loved taking pictures.
I leaned against the counter and watched her cook like it was a private performance.
Frankie moved the way she always had when she was in her element—fast, instinctive, a little chaotic but somehow landing on her feet every time. She chopped without measuring. Tasted straight from the spoon. Swore at the stove like it had personally offended her.
She looked exactly like she had the night we stayed up until three a.m. senior year, mapping out escape plans from a town that never quite fit either of us. Like she had the first time I’d dragged her to an open mic and dared her not to hide in the back row. Like she had when she admitted she was in love with four guys and they were going to make it work. Like she had when she’d told me, fiercely and without hesitation, that I deserved more than being someone’s secret.
Efficient. Certain. Like she knew exactly what she needed to do—even when she didn’t.
It was infuriating.
It was adorable.
She was adorable.
And she made everything better.
I had loved her once in a way that had nothing to do with friendship. In a way that had kept me up at night, that had convinced me staying near her might someday magically transform us into a possibility.
It never had.
She had never looked at me like that.
And somehow that had made loving her as my best friend both easier and harder.
Being her person—her constant—had become the thing I held onto instead. The thing that felt permanent when everything else shifted.
I loved her for that so damn much.
I hated myself for loving her for that.
I’d made peace with it years ago.
Mostly.
“You’re quiet,” she said without looking up. She was chopping onions, eyes watering, pretending not to notice.
