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“Can I borrow this?” I asked. “It’s … wow.”

She gave me her apartment number and contact info, then headed out, taking my historical fiction with her.

I texted her for the first time that night at three a.m. like some kind of addict.

Willa

Is book two out yet?

She immediately called, sounding like she, too, had been up. She also sounded smug. Like she’d just been upwaitingfor my call.

And friendship was born. Over dragons and epic romance and my admiration for her decisiveness and my willingness to ply her with royal icing.

“Hey!” Sophie bursts in, her greeting breathless, like she ran down the stairs to my apartment.

She and I avoid the elevator, which is toward the front of the building and groans, like any moment it’s going to give up on life. Neither of us want to be inside it when it finally dies.

“Icing’s on the counter, and I’m working on your tea.”

While I put on the kettle, she hangs her coat on the hook by the door and fluffs out her dark curls. A smear of dirt is on her cheek.

Settling onto a stool, she drags the broken head of a unicorn cookie through the bowl of royal icing I set out. Her eyes roll back in her head as she takes a bite.

“You’re the best,” she mumbles around the mouthful. “I swear, these should be illegal.”

“Thank you.” I wish her endorsement was enough to keep my fledgling cookie business afloat.

But alas, Sophie’s love of my cookies, and my own skill at baking and decorating, is not enough to bring in the wild success I hoped for when I quit my job to start Serendipitous Sweets.

Mostly because I’m as bad at marketing and the business side of things as I am at making firm decisions. I set Sophie’s tea in front of her. I’m a steadfast coffee drinker but keep Lady Grey just for her. As best friends do.

“Nice pajamas,” she says around another bite.

I glance down, then groan, reminded that not only did I defy the laws of space, time, and probably physics tonight by appearing in my new landlord’s closet, but I did so wearing my favorite llama pajamas.

With shorts that feel indecently short, considering I wore them in front of him. And Bellamy too. I groan again, louder, then drop my head into my hands.

“That bad, huh?”

“Worse.”

“So, tell me about this incident that has you looking like you’ve seen the Ghost of Christmas Past.”

The Ghost of Christmas Future would be the scary one. Especially now that I can imagine not just my inability to ever pay back my small business loan but also ending up evicted.

I drag a stool around to my usual spot on the other side of the island. My knees knock into the lower cabinets this way, but I like sitting across from Sophie. I take a piece of a broken daisy and twirl it between my fingertips.

“You’re going to think I’m delusional.”

Sophie gasps. “I would never.”

“The alternative is that you’ll think I’m lying.”

“I wouldalsonever. Now, spill.”

Drawing in a steadying breath, I explain what happened, watching her green eyes grow rounder and rounder as I explain being in my closet one minute, searching for my favorite softblue sweater, and then upstairs in a totally different apartment the next.

I stop just short of saying how hot our new building owner is. And how good he smelled. The way I wanted to keep arguing with him just to hear him growl out answers in that gravelly voice.