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“Maybe you should write it,” Noah says, crouching to study a medieval aloe plant. “Or offer it to another writer you work with?”

And... heart and confidence now plummeting down to the core of the earth. Invitation to Italy spontaneously combusting. “Why not you?”

Noah circles the fountain, arms crossed over his chest. “I’m not trying to make this harder. But recently, I’m finding myself less interested in the meet-cute as an engine.”

Two weeks ago, I would have found this comment obnoxious, dismissive of the books I love and he claims to love, too. I would have fought back: The meet-cute is everything! All good love stories need one.

But today is not about me. It’s about helping Noah get inspired.

“And you’re finding yourselfmoreinterested in...” I offer.

He looks at me. His green eyes flash. “The full rhapsodic spectacle of life.”

Well, he was ready for me there.

“Okay,” I say slowly. “Yeah, that can be romantic, too.”

He tips his head for me to follow him, and we walk out of the garden, toward an elevated stone walkway that overlooksthe Hudson River. It’s a gorgeous day, a spectacular view. I resist the urge to tell him this is one of the highest points in all of Manhattan.

“My mom is sick,” Noah says, leaning his elbows on the railing by the river. “She has Alzheimer’s. And recently, she’s taken a turn.”

I stand near him, feeling crushed on his behalf. “I’m so sorry.”

“I’m not telling you to make excuses. I only want to explain. My mom is the reason I started writing.”

“Really?” I’ve always wondered about the Noa Callaway origin story. Everyone at Peony has.

“Her first name is Calla,” he says. “I wroteNinety-Nine Thingsbecause of her. She likes love stories. She used to, anyway.” He rubs his jaw, and gazes out across the water. Sorrow shimmers from him. I recognize it well.

I know the best that I can do is listen.

“If this book is the last book I write that she gets to read,” he says, “I want it to speak to the scope of love, not just to its beginning.”

“The epic of a heart,” I say, as my skin pricks with goose bumps. It’s not bad. It’s very good.

He nods. “I don’t know who the characters are, or what the circumstances would be....”

For a few moments we say nothing, but it doesn’t feel like one of those silences you look for ways to fill. It feels like we are letting this quiet upper reach of Manhattan take our hard conversation in its gentle hands.

“Tell me about your mom,” I say. “You said you were raised by a house full of women?”

“After my dad left,” he says, “Mom and I lived with two other ladies from her nursing school. Aunt Terry and Aunt B.”

“Back up. Aunt... Terry?”

Noah smiles, enjoying my surprise. “We were this crazy, estrogen-rich, romance-loving household. My mom and my aunts’ favorite thing to do was swap novels and argue over plots and characters. It was like a book club that never ended.”

“And eventually,” I say, “you got inducted?”

“I readClan of the Cave Bearin first grade.”

“Those books are so underrated!” I say. “Jondalar was my first fictional crush.”

“Oh, is that your type?” he jokes and I turn red, thinking back on those notoriously steamy cave scenes that I read at least three thousand times.

“So when you started writing...” I say, putting a corner piece of the Noa Callaway puzzle into place.

He nods. “I’d fallen in love with love. Though, obviously, at twenty, I didn’t know a thing about it.”