Page 122 of In Somnis

“That’s your argument?”

“If it worked for the original Lennon, it can’t be wrong for you.” She shrugs, and I snort, making her smile. “You like Nevan too.”

“We’re friends.”

“You like him,” she says again, with the patience of someone who has watched me lie to myself professionally.

“He’s into someone else. There’s that girl at the inn, Sydney, he’s been pining over for a year.”

“And?” Tessa’s expression doesn’t move.

“And I’m not going to be the person who complicates that.”

“So you do like him.” She grins.

“I really don’t. I’m just… we’re friends.”

“Uh-huh.” She looks at me with that look. The one that means, you hear yourself, right?

I look at my milkshake.

She doesn’t push further, just hums to herself, which is somehow worse. “And the other one?”

I hesitate. “Ridge?”

“Yeah… Ridge.”

The name sits different than the others in this space. With Paul, it went warm, and with Nevan, it went pink. With Ridge, it got very still.

“He’s complicated,” I say.

“Your favorite.”

“Tessa…”

“I’m not wrong. You like your men complicated.” She watches me with those green eyes that have always had too much patience for my deflections. “What about him is complicated?”

I huff a laugh. “Literally everything.”

“Do you trust him?”

Do I?

Tessa’s eyes flick to the corridor behind me, in the direction of a flickering light. I can already feel it even though I haven’t turned to look.

I frown and look down the corridor in both directions.

Empty. Every shop, every bench, every escalator. The music from the store speakers has cut out. The other shoppers, the couple with the stroller, the teenagers outside the phone case kiosk, the woman with the enormous pretzel—all of it, just gone. Only us, and the pale skylight, and the soft sound of the fountain that somehow keeps going.

“Huh,” I say.

“Huh?” Tessa asks.

“Everyone’s gone.”

She glances around. “So they are.”

I look back at my milkshake, but then notice my hand wrapped around the cup.