10:42 P.M.

WHEN TOBIAS’S LIPS FINALLY LEAVE MINE it takes me a second to remember where we are. Dinner. The list. I touch my fingers to my lips and blink back out at the table. Audrey and Conrad are looking at us. Robert is busying himself with his soufflé, and Jessica has her arms crossed next to me.

“I’m sure that fixed everything,” she deadpans.

“I miss being kissed like that,” Audrey says. Her voice is low and breathy, and then she startles up and looks at Conrad. I imagine, under the table, they’ve brushed legs.

Tobias is looking at me like he’s trying to gauge my reaction, but all I can think is that I want to know how he feels, what he’s thinking. I want to take his hand and run outside and take him home.

“Sorry,” Tobias says to me. “I didn’t mean to…” Tobias looks to Jessica. “Did you want us to get married?”

“Of course,” she says, but her words are unconvincing. “I wanted you guys to be happy. This isn’t about me.”

“It kind of is, though,” Tobias says. “You won’t stop talking, and you’re here.”

“Yeah, but I’m not kissing her. Plus, I’m alive.” Her face sneaks a smile, and Tobias notices.

“Jess,” he says. “Conrad is very much alive, as are you, and Sabrina.”

Jessica rolls her eyes, but the smile is still there.

“We used to have fun together,” he says. He scoots his chair so he’s facing me, talking to her. “Remember the night we drew all over Sabby in Magic Marker and put toothpaste on her feet?”

“She deserved it,” Jessica says. “She made us miss Book of Mormon.”

“It was my birthday,” I say.

“Yeah, twenty-fourth. You should have been able to handle your booze better.” Tobias needles me with his elbow, and Jessica laughs.

“You were so pissed,” she says. “You didn’t speak to either of us all day.”

“Correction,” I say. “I was puking all day.”

“Still,” Tobias says. “That was us.”

Jessica leans back and nods. “Yeah. It was. But that was a long time ago.”

I feel the air charged around me. Like I’m the space between the positive and negative ions. The dense collection of yes and no trying to come together and apart, together and apart.

“Maybe you shouldn’t have taken me back,” Tobias says. He’s leaning forward with his hands clasped over his knees. “After L.A. Maybe you should have moved on then, stayed with Paul, I don’t know.”

I think of saying no to that buzzer, of not letting him up and back into my life. But it was never a viable option. When Tobias came back, there was no alternative.

“I never asked you to stay,” I say. Not even to him, to the whole table. “I couldn’t come to L.A. with you, but I never asked you to stay.”

“Why didn’t you?” Audrey asks.

“I was too proud. Or too afraid, I guess. That he’d say no. Or he’d say yes and then resent me.”

“Would you have, Tobias?” Audrey’s voice floats in on the breeze. “Would you have stayed?”

I want him to say no so badly I can practically taste it. It feels ripe in my mouth—a berry about to be plucked.

“I don’t know,” he says. “Or no. I guess the answer is no. She didn’t have to ask; I went. I hated it, but I had to.”

“And you came back?” Audrey asks. “Why?”

“Because I couldn’t live without her.”

The table hangs in silence. No one moves, not even to pick up a wineglass.

I never questioned that Tobias was the one for me, but what if all this missed opportunity, strife, and heartbreak didn’t point to the epicness of our relationship but instead its precariousness? Its fragility. Maybe Jessica was right—we hadn’t grown up, we hadn’t taken responsibility. I somehow believed the universe would do it for us. I believed it tonight, still sitting here. But what if the work had been up to us all along? Timing is everything, Jessica told me when he left. And tonight, we are almost out of time entirely.