And right there in the middle, Nina and I are eating the last bites of our ice cream sandwiches.
Nina licks her fingers, stands up, and tosses both of our wrappers in the trash. “I hope he gets here before they start,” she says. And then she twists her head around, looking at the heavy crowds of people on either side of the street.
“Who?” I say. But she doesn’t hear me because she’s up on her tiptoes waving her arms and yelling.
“Max!” she calls out. “Maxie! We’re over here!” A lanky guy, with red hair and an earring in each ear, is walking towards us through the crowd, grinning.
“Hey, girl,” he says. He’s laughing. “Hey! Hey! Hey!” They hug and he spins her around.
“Maxie,” Nina says. “This is…”
“Hey, I know you,” Brad says suddenly. “You come into Mon Coeur! You always order something quirky…” He starts snapping his fingers, trying to remember.
“Two Earl Grey tea bags in a small to-go cup with extra room for milk!” I say suddenly. This is Earl Grey!
“Girl deserves a raise,” Max/Earl Grey says grinning at me. “Sorry I had to lie to you when you called me last week.” I notice his slight Southern accent now. “That was, uh, kind of necessary at the time.”
“No problem,” I say, grinning back. “Just drop a couple bucks in the tip jar next time you’re at Mon Coeur and we’ll forget all about it.”
“Wait!” Amanda says suddenly, disentangling herself from Adam’s giant arms. She stands up. “You’re the Southern guy, who we called from Attic! The one who used to date Deb…”
“Well, except there is no Deb,” Max/Earl Grey says. He rocks back on his heels. “That was just some quick thinking on my part.” He taps his temple and winks.
“I am so confused,” Amanda says. And I look over at her and she grins at me like this-is-all-so-crazy.
“I’ll explain later,” I say with a wink.
To her right, Cody is smiling at me again, I smile back.
It’s almost time now.
Women are putting little cardigans on over their dresses and couples are holding hands and leaning against each other. Directly across the street two little girls, one older, one younger, are running, running, running around their parents’ legs.
I turn toward Nina. She reclines a little in her seat and something white falls out of her pocket onto the grass below. I can still just barely make it out under the fading light. It’s the napkin Nina was sketching on during our flight home. There I am, curly hair curling in all directions, one dimple, and a crooked smile. And there she is, straighter hair, matching dimple, big smile that takes up half her face. I reach out for it, but stop myself. I will leave this one here for someone else to find.
“Belly.” Nina pokes me in the arm. “Look up! They’re starting!”
And I tip my head back just in time to see the dark summer sky fill up with light.
Acknowledgments
Thank you so very much…
To Liesa Abrams, Andrea Byler, Tigerlili Cavill, Mary Crosbie, Diego Hernandez, Melanie Altarescu Jafar, Sarah Lee, Greg Matherly, Micol Ostow, Christopher Prince-Barry, Lizzie Schechter, Christina Sfekas, Jill Santopolo, Daniel Shaw, Bob Smith, Siobhan Vivian, and Elise West for helping me with this book in a variety of ways, some that you know about and some that you don’t. You are very special and very precious and of course very, very pretty!
To my fabulous agent Lydia Wills and her assistant Alyssa Reuben.
To Abby McAden and Morgan Matson, for being so smart and fantastic to work with. And to Cheryl Weisman, Christopher Stengel, and Elizabeth Parisi at Scholastic.
To Vicky Newman for her gorgeous drawings.
To Cheryl Weingarten and Donald Weingarten for being my mom and my dad! I love you both very much!
And to my brilliant, funny, and patient editor (and friend) Aimee Friedman. I am so happy to have gotten to work with you on this. Thank you for being so incredibly lovely at every step of the way.