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“Youlikethat I’m doing this!” I exclaim. “Also, we weren’t ever really…together. Not officially.”

Nora tucks a few bobby pins in her lips and pulls my hair back from my face, still with that little smile on her lips.

“It was a fling,” I say.

A rebound, for both of us. Pain spasms in my stomach as I run my thumb over my wrist. Eli wasn’t the one who hurt me. Not the way the one before did.

“Listen,” I say, pointing my finger at my friend in the mirror. “This doesn’t mean anything beyond what I told Eli. I felt sorry for him.”

“Mm-hmm,” Nora says, her eyes dancing now as she begins pinning my dirty blonde strands on top of my head.

But for some reason her assumption that this is a good thing makes my stomach skitter with nerves. It’s not a good thing. “Nora, you know how I feel about him.” I’m nearly despondent now.

“I do,” she says over the pins, not unkindly. In fact, she gives me a smile that’s almost sad. She takes the pins out of her mouth. “Reese, I just want you to be happy. I know that when you told me about what happened today, you sounded more alive than I’ve heard from you in a long time.” She meets my eyes. “Maybe in as long as I’ve known you.”

I open my mouth, but don’t have anything to say to that.

“You’re stepping out of your comfort zone, Reese. Being brave.”

It’s true, I haven’t exactly been myself since I moved to Quince Valley. I always blamed it on the fact that I was working in my ex’s hotel, in an industry I’d been trying to step away from for years. But now, I wonder if she’s onto something.

“You talk all the time about how your life is missing something,” she continues, slipping a pin into my hair.

“I didn’t mean Eli!”

Rufus perks up, as if he knows who I’m talking about. He probably does. The one time I ran into Eli with Rufus, Eli showered him with affection, like he was the best dog in the world. Which he is, of course. I run my hand over Rufus’s back. “You’re a softie,” I whisper.

“I was thinking more about this move to California,” I say.

Nora meets my eyes. “So you’re really doing it, huh?”

I pull out my vanity drawer, lifting up the brochure for the Sebastopol Children’s Academy of Music.“I think so. It sounds good, doesn’t it?”

I open the brochure for the hundredth time. It was my brother Pietro who sent it to me. A colleague of his talked about how sad they were to be leaving it behind when they relocated to the UK, where he lives now.

Maybe the change you’ve been looking for?he wrote on the note stuck to the top.

I’d been irritated at first that Michelle had told him I still thought about music. But how could I stay mad at her for never giving up on me, even when I did years ago?

“It sounds nice,” Nora says, lifting up another section of hair. There’s something non-committal in her tone.

“It’ll be good for me, Nor. I can teach guitar or voice to kids and pretend I’m not a total sell-out.”

“You’re not a sell-out, Reese. You’re good at what you do.”

“What, managing a restaurant in my ex’s hotel?” Eli’s half the reason I’m moving. Hell, maybe the whole reason.

Nora pinches her lips in the mirror, and I narrow my eyes. “I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, ‘why, if you’re running away from Eli, you’ve agreed to go masquerade as his girlfriend?’ And honestly, I can’t blame you! See? I’ve lost my damn mind.”

Nora grins. “I’m not thinking that. I’m thinking I’m proud of you for doing this, because as messed up as it is, part of you thinks this could be fun.”

“I don’t—”

“Admit it! You said you miss fun.”

Rufus pants, almost looking like he’s smiling.

I groan as I hug him tight. “I do miss fun.” I miss a lot of things I used to have in my life. A life, mostly, outside of work. Dating, which I swore off after Eli. My sister and nieces.