Ren has one arm draped over the steering wheel as he angles toward me, mouth in a straight line.
“We’ll talk about it,” he says. “We’ll figure this out. Okay?”
Something on Ren’s face tells me he might have spent the night worrying about this too.
“Joni!” Stevie shouts, impatient as ever.
Ren’s mouth twitches into a smile, and my heart gives a hopeful beat.
“Okay,” I say, smiling back at him.
“I am freezing myassoff for you,” Stevie calls.
I roll my eyes at Ren, and he laughs as I hustle across the sidewalk toward my sister.
“Sorry, Stevie!” he shouts.
“Yeah, yeah,” Stevie says. She doesn’t sound all that irritated when she adds, “You two are so annoying,” opening her door and ushering me inside.
I turn and wave at Ren one more time before the door closes behind us.
* * *
After Sasha’s bridesmaid brunch, we head back to Stevie’s apartment and curl up under the extra-fluffy duvet on her bed, both of us sleepy after mimosas.
“Remember how freezing it was in our apartment that one winter in New York?” I ask as I tuck the blanket farther under my chin. “Your place feels like that.”
“Yeah, but that was because our landlord was an asshole and took a lifetime to fix our radiator,” she says, her hair fanning out on the pillow. “I’m just being economical.”
I tap my icy toes against her shin. “Did Leo think your place was freezing?” The corners of Stevie’s mouth pinch as she tries to hide a smile. “Youlikehim, don’t you?”
“Clearly,” she says, nodding over my shoulder. “That’s his sweatshirt.”
I twist my head to look at the green crewneck hanging over the back of her desk chair. “Stevie Miller,” I say. “You did not let aboyleave his clothes in your apartment.”
She buries her face into her pillow, letting out a groan that doesn’t sound altogether bad. “Iknow.”
We nap, talk until it’s time to get ready for the rehearsal dinner. We’ll meet our parents at the restaurant, and while I’m excited to see everyone, something inside me buzzes as the seconds tick down until I get to see Ren again. I feel a little like I’m losing my mind, giddy anticipation coursing through me as I fix my hair, apply mascara in Stevie’s bathroom mirror, and it occurs to me that this secret might not be so easy to keep.
When we arrive, he’s standing with Thad and Gemi in the back room of the trendy cocktail bar in a pale blue button-down and navy blazer.
“About time you got here,” Thad says, throwing an arm around my shoulders. I’ve only flown into Portland since moving to New York, always headed to the coast or south to see my parents, and haven’t been here when Thad or Sasha have come up from LA.
I hug Gemi before I turn to Ren.
“Joni,” he says, like we’re in on some joke, like a hummingbird isn’t fluttering against my rib cage, like he wasn’t just biting his cheek to keep himself focused.
“Ren. Long time no see.”
“Ages,” he says, cheek hollowing.
I push down the impulse to throw all caution to the wind and kiss him right here.
True to Sasha’s form, the rehearsal dinner is immaculate down to the tiniest details, a carefully curated menu based on the places she and Alex have traveled together, everyone’s place card done in careful calligraphy with the flowers of each guest’s birth month twining around their names. Seated next to each other as usual, Ren and I spend most of dinner with our legs tangled together under the table, his hand sneaking every so often to my thigh or my hip, pulling mine over to his leg so he can flip it palm side up and trace lines across it.
When Hannah asks how I am, I tell her I’ve never been better.
When my mom says I seem good, healthy, happy, where it once would have grated against me—what did I seem like before, Mom?—now it just lifts me higher off the ground, that she can see how well I can take care of myself.
