23. Salem
SALEM
By the time I got to the apartment, it was dark.
All the lights were off, the curtains drawn tight like Rowan was trying to contain whatever had happened inside. She’d sounded distraught on the phone, her voice sharp and uneven, words tumbling over each other so fast I hadn’t caught a single one. Something about .
Rowan was not the type to cry over a delayed package, which meant my brain had spent the entire drive from the bank filling in every worst-case scenario, each one worse than the last, arriving at her door with my heart already in my throat.
The guilt sat right where it always did—behind my sternum, just left of center.
I had been thirty seconds away from telling her everything—the shop, the loan—and then her voice had broken on my name, and all of it dissolved.
That was probably the universe’s way of telling me I was awful for hiding this, but I was choosing to interpret it as bad timing.
Every day I didn’t tell her, the lie got heavier.
I pushed the apartment door open and let it swing behind me. “Rowan!”
A muffled sound came from her bedroom.
I crossed the apartment and pushed the door to find a Rowan-shaped lump buried under a floral duvet.
Her room was aggressively grandma-core—soft florals, seashell accents, a coastal vibe that somehow never quite matched her personality but had been very intentionally curated anyway.
I peeled back layers of blanket until I found her face. Red, puffy eyes stared back at me.
“Hey,” I said, softer. “What’s going on?”
“We have to move,” she said weakly.
I sat on the edge of the bed. “Okay. We can move. But can you tell me why first?”
Rowan shot upright like a Pop-Tarts out of a toaster and started pacing, one hand dragging through her hair. “I have never—and I mean never—been this embarrassed in my entire life.”
“Okay.”
“You know the hot neighbor? 2B? The muscles? The blue T-shirts? The hair”—she gestured wildly at her head—“you know the hair.”
“Yes. I know the hair.”
“Well. I ended up with a small yeast infection.”
I blinked. “Okay.”
“So, I hadn’t paid for Prime this year, but I needed to order cream immediately.
I called Dad and asked him to order it and said I’d pay him back.
” She dropped onto the foot of the bed, her knee bouncing.
“He said he sent it. It never arrived. So, I panicked and bought some in town, which was mortifying, but kitty is fine. We are all cleared up.”
“Please never say kitty again.”
“That is not the worst part.”
“I’m waiting.”
“Today,” she said, her voice dropping, “there’s a knock at my door. And 2B—hot, beautiful, criminally attractive 2B—is standing there holding an open box.”
My hand flew to my mouth.
“The driver delivered it to him by mistake, and he opened it because he thought it was his.” She turned to face me fully, her eyes wide.
“My dad, having absolutely no idea what he was ordering, not looking at the picture I sent him”—she gestured to the side of her bed where an enormous box sat, its contents unmistakable—“bought me a near lifetime supply. Nineteen treatments. Not one-day treatments. Seven-day treatments. Nineteen. Seven-day. Treatments.”
I wheezed.
“What did you do?”
“Stared. Just stared. And then he introduces himself. Says his name is Callum.” Her voice cracked. “And then he goes, ‘I assumed someone here was in desperate need. Thought it was smart to deliver this personally.’”
I lost it.
“Oh my God,” I gasped, wiping at my face. “Hot neighbor and industrial-strength Monistat. That’s an intro from hell.”
“This is not funny,” she pouted, fresh tears streaming.
“It absolutely is.” I pulled her into me and tucked her against my chest. “This is nursing-home-level hilarious. Like tell-this-story-until-we-die funny.” I stroked her hair. “Also, you could have blamed it on me.”
She yanked back. “I—wait, actually—”
“Too late now.”
“I hate you.”
“You don’t.”
She slumped against me again, her head heavy on my shoulder. “He spoke to me. Finally. And now I can never leave this apartment.”
“Rowan,” I said, pulling back to look at her properly. “This is the best possible outcome.”
She stared at me.
“I’m serious. This is wedding speech material.
Think about it. If he even says hi to you again, you’re in.
You’ve already cleared nine early relationship barriers in one interaction.
You never have to wonder if he’s interested.
If Callum from 2B waves at you in the hallway after this, that man is unbothered, and you have already won. ”
She blinked slowly. “That’s… actually true.”
“It sure is.”
She let out a long, shaky breath. I watched some of the panic go out of her face.
Rowan had been obsessing over 2B for months, and if he was anything like the version she had built up in her head, he was absolutely going to talk to her again.
And someday—probably at a rehearsal dinner, probably with better wine than either of them could currently afford—this was going to be a very, very funny story.
“Okay.” She sat upright and wiped her face with her sleeve. “Okay. I’m fine.”
“You’re fine.”
“The box is going in the closet, and we never speak of it again.”
“Completely reasonable. Although, does yeast infection cream expire?”
She stared at me.
“I’m just saying. Nineteen treatments is a lot to waste.”
“Goodbye. I’m asking you to leave.”
“You’re not.”
She almost smiled. Almost. She took one more steadying breath and looked at me. “Okay. What’s going on with you? You sounded weird on the phone before I started crying.”
I opened my mouth.
Closed it.
“We kissed,” I said.
She stared at me.
“Salem.”
“I know.”
“You kissed him.”
“Yes.”
“The shirtless skeleton man from the viral video who you have been pretending is merely a professional acquaintance for the last few weeks, while secretly pining over him and having to tell the world you are into him—which you absolutely are—”
“That is a reductive summary—”
“Kissed you.”
“Technically, I kissed him back, so it was collaborative—”
“Oh, my God.” She grabbed my arm. “Are you in trouble?”
I looked at her. At the red nose and the damp cheeks and the Monistat box sitting beside the bed like a warning about life’s general unpredictability.
“Genuine trouble,” I said. “Yes.”
She let out a long breath and squeezed my arm once, hard, the way she did when she meant something she didn’t have words for yet. Then she sat back and looked at the ceiling.
“Lucy’s going to be at this beach thing tomorrow,” she said.
“Yeah?”
“And now you have kissed this man, and you have to stand next to him and pretend everything is normal.”
“That is a cliff note version of my situation.”
She nodded slowly. “I would love to be present for all of that.”
“Yes. Please come with me.”
She tilted her head.” I was saying that more as distance support.”
“Ethan’s picking me up tomorrow, but Paul’s coming too, so it’d just be the one car instead of three.”
“Okay…?”
“Ugh, I really need you tomorrow. Please. Like, genuinely. I will owe you for the rest of the calendar year. I will do your laundry. I will pretend to find your dad’s golf stories interesting at Thanksgiving. Name it.”
She crossed her arms slowly, the way she did right before she made me work for something. “But I have to ride in a car with Paul?”
“Yeah.”
“This is a tall order.”
I put on my largest puppy dog eyes and jutted out my bottom lip as far as physically possible.
“No.” She held up a hand like she was closing the conversation.
“Absolutely not. I left that man at a restaurant a month ago. I have an entire system built around never being in a room with him, let alone a sealed metal box on a thirty-minute drive with no exit that doesn’t involve a moving vehicle and a body cast.”
“I know.”
“Then why would you—”
“Because I don’t know how to do tomorrow without you.
” It came out faster and more honest than I meant it to.
“Lucy’s going to be there. The cameras will be there.
I have to be charming and normal and in love on command in front of a hundred people, and the only person who makes that feel survivable instead of like a job interview is you.
I’m not—I’m not trying to trick you into it. I’m asking. Please.”
Rowan went quiet.
“I know, I’m sorry. But I can’t do tomorrow without you, and you know it.”
She stared at the ceiling for a long moment.
“I can also bribe you with something stupid, if it helps.”
She lay there for another few seconds with her arms over her face. Then, muffled: “Fine.”
“Fine?”
“Fine. I’ll come.” She dropped her arms and pointed at me, deadly serious. “But I am not speaking to Paul. Not one word. Pointed silence and the occasional sigh, that’s all he gets.”
“Understood.”
“And if he tries to apologize, or explain, or says my name like he’s earned the right to say it, I am opening the door while the car is in motion.”
“I’ll tell Ethan to drive slow past anything soft.”
“Thank you. I appreciate you taking this seriously.”
She sat back up, the resistance gone as fast as it had shown up. “Okay. Outfits. You need something that screams ‘I am not available, but you want me anyway’ and I need something that will make Paul regret everything he has done in this season.”
“That’s a very specific brand.”
“Totally is.” She turned and yanked the drawer open with renewed purpose, glancing back at me over her shoulder with a small, knowing smile.
“But babe,” she said. “I have just the thing.”