42. Salem
SALEM
Ihad a half-formed theory that Alba wasn’t entirely human—something about the bold patterns, impossible colors, and the uncanny ability to materialize exactly when and where you needed her.
It was a half-baked theory, really, that she didn’t fully exist the way the rest of us did.
She was something else entirely—an angel dispatched from somewhere with a very specific mission and an excellent wardrobe budget.
Sure enough, when I was at my lowest, my phone rang, and it was her, demanding lunch in the most aggressive way Alba could manage, which was with a please and an offer of an Alba hug.
That was probably what I needed.
I met her at the restaurant she chose—small, tucked back from the main street. The rain hit the windows in a low, steady rhythm that matched my mood.
She was already there when I arrived, her hands wrapped around a coffee, and she wore something in a shade of yellow that had no business being that beautiful. She stood when she saw me and pulled me into a hug that I held onto for a second longer than I meant to.
She ordered for both of us without looking at the menu. I let her. I hadn’t made a single good decision in three days and saw no reason to start now.
I set the jacket on the table between us.
Alba looked at it. Then at me.
“Can you return this to him?” I said. “I haven’t found the nerve yet.”
She picked up her coffee and took a slow sip, set it down, and slid the jacket back across the table toward me without a word.
“Alba.”
“Nope,” she said pleasantly. “That one’s yours to return.”
“I came all the way here with it—”
“You’ll leave with it, and then you’ll take it back to him yourself.” She raised her eyebrows.
I pulled the jacket onto the seat beside me.
“So,” she said when the waiter left. “Last I heard, you were standing in a hotel lobby at some ungodly hour in the morning wearing a stolen jacket.”
“Still no resolution, apparently.”
She picked up her coffee, took a sip, and didn’t say anything, which with Alba meant she was listening.
“Rowan’s not talking to me.”
Alba tilted her head. “What happened with Rowan?”
So, I told her. The shop, the loan, the months of saying nothing while Rowan made plans that included a version of me that didn’t exist anymore. Chuck saying something in the shop in front of her. The way Rowan’s face had looked when she realized.
Alba listened without interrupting, which was its own kind of gift.
“Oh, Salem,” she said when I finished.
“I know.”
“How long had you known? About the shop?”
“Months. I kept telling myself I was waiting for the right moment, but the right moment kept not arriving, and I kept not making it arrive, and eventually I just—didn’t tell her because it was easier not to.”
Alba looking at her cup rather than at me, which somehow made it easier to keep talking.
“I made cookies and bought flowers. Left them outside her door this morning.”
“That’s something.”
“It’s not enough.”
“No, but it’s a start.” She looked up at me. “So, what you did to Rowan is the same thing Ethan's been doing to Lucy. Isn't it?”
I opened my mouth to answer.
The thing that had been sitting just out of reach for three days—the thing I’d been circling without being able to name—arrived all at once and landed somewhere unavoidable.
Lucy’s text was a trigger for my guilt with Rowan. Lucy's text had never been about Ethan. Not to me. It had my name all over it.
I'd been circling it for three days, catching pieces of it and putting them back down. Now, it was all the way here.
“Oh.”
Alba didn’t say anything.
“Oh no.”
She still didn’t say anything. She just sat there—warm and certain and completely unsurprised —and let me have the moment.
“This was never about Lucy,” I said. “Oh, man.”
“Yeah.”
“What a mess.”
“Little bit.”
I pressed both hands over my face. The rain kept going against the window. The café kept being warm and indifferent to the fact that I was sitting in it, having a realization I should have had three days ago.
“Okay,” I said finally, dropping my hands.
Alba raised an eyebrow.
“Okay,” I said again, more certain this time. “I need to fix it. All of it. I need to actually talk to Rowan, and I need to go find Ethan.”
Alba smiled, slow and warm and completely satisfied. “There she is.”
I knew what I needed to do.
Alba was a genius.
She got me there before the food even hit the table. Truly an angel with an unbelievable wardrobe.