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“I do, too,” I reminded her. “But you were also the one who told me to stop being so guarded, remember?”

She whined in defeat and threw her head back onto the sofa. “Fine, but answer me this: why Hayden?”

I replied without hesitation, “Why not Hayden?”

“You’re willing to, sorry, could you repeat that?”

I rolled my eyes at Vanessa’s theatrical disbelief.

“Isaidthat I’m willing to be a little more amenable to some of the changes that Hayden wants to make.”

“Christ, is it gonna snow or something- Joe! Come over here!”

“Don’t make it into something bigger than it needs to be.” I groaned. “I already got an earful from Nikkie and I don’t need another one from you or Joe.”

“Oh, we’re not going to give you an earful.” She laughed. “We just wanna make sure you didn’t fall out of bed and hit your head real hard.”

“You are not helping.” I sighed. “Why is this such a major surprise?”

“You changing your mind at all?” Joe said, finally close enough to hear Vanessa tease me. “That’s as common as pigs flying over a blue moon.”

“Har har,” I drawled. “I’m kind of nervous about the whole thing, could you maybe be a little more supportive?”

“We always are.” Vanessa smiled. “We just hate seeing you all grown. You’re thirty and yet we still feel like you’re our little whirlwind, you know?”

“Okay, less mush please?” I laughed. “I’m going to ask Hayden to meet me for lunch to talk it all over. Is that okay?”

Surprisingly, Joe was the one who answered. “Of course it is,” he said. “We’re more than capable of holding down the fort so you can go to lunch with the boss.”

“Thanks,” I said, taking a deep breath. I pulled out my phone, walking away from Joe and Vanessa for good measure to call Hayden.

She answered almost immediately. “This is a surprise,” she greeted, but I could hear the smile in her voice.

“Well, get ready for another,” I joked, my heart fluttering just a little. “Are you free for lunch?”

The brief beat of silence on the other end of the line told me I had surprised her.

“I can be,” she answered eventually.

“Perfect, I’ll text you.”

The handful of hours that stretched out between my call with Hayden and lunch were torturous. The minutes crawled by as if they were trying to light a fire under the anxiety already burning in my gut.

I wasn’t nervous, exactly, just anxious.

But eventually, we sat across from one another, menus in hand.

“You’ve never been here?” I asked her.

She shook her head, taking in the quaint decor with an impressed frown. “I may have heard about it a while ago,” she said, turning back to me. “But I’ve never had the time to drop by.”

“I thought you were obsessed with food.”

“Oh, I am.” She chuckled. “So you can understand that missing out on this meant I was really busy.”

“I’m glad you could meet me here, then,” I said with a smile.

“Why am I here?” she asked, folding her arms and leaning forward.