(Noah)

She's trying to kill me. I was in agreement with taking things slowly, and I can't deny we've done a better job of talking this weekend than we did in October. But I did not agree to this. To Shelly leaping at me minutes before she abandons me for two very long, very lonely weeks. She's lost her mind and apparently she's intent on making sure I go crazy, too.

"Two weeks," she says, before tormenting me with another reminder of everything we are now going to have to wait for. She finally breaks for air but I keep her close, leaning my forehead against hers.

"You will be the death of me, Elle Evans."

"We got through a year of a much greater distance between us, and much longer waits between visits." Elle reminds me.

"We did. But back then you would do this within five minutes of arriving, not wait until five minutes before leaving."

Her reaction is somewhere between a giggle and a sigh. "A lot is different right now."

An understatement if ever I heard one. My hands have settled back down at her waist after venturing dangerously high in our initial madness, so I am acutely aware of the most significant of those changes.

"And I'm not sorry I waited." Elle continues. "We managed a lot this weekend. A lot of necessary discussions that might not have happened if we'd been distracted."

"I'm not sorry either. And pay no attention to my grumbling. Five minutes before you leave is better than not at all. Even if I am tempted to follow you into that plane and call in sick tomorrow."

Elle closes her eyes and doesn't respond immediately. Finally, quietly, she does. "I don't want to go because when I'm with you I know we're going to work all this out."

Now I'm definitely considering following her home and just not coming back. Not if she needs me there to trust this. "And when I'm not there?"

"It's… more overwhelming. I overthink everything."

"So don't. Only think about the important part."

"Which is?"

"This. Us. Our repeated failure to get even the slightest bit over each other."

"We're really bad at getting over each other. We should stop trying." The words are joking, but her tone is entirely earnest.

"I'm already done trying. Very, extremely done. I love you, Elle. That's not new, I've just been terrible about admitting it these past few years."

"I made it kind of hard when I ran away." She whispers.

"Stop. We said we were done with that conversation. You're here now. I'm here now. And I love you." And I'm going to keep saying it until she trusts it.

Elle sits back slightly to look at me, resting her hands at my shoulders. "Me too. I mean - I love you, too. Still. I never stopped."

I watch her eyes fill with tears, and she buries her head against me again.

"Argh. It's the ridiculous crying again. I'm not sad. I am the opposite of sad." She mutters into my shoulder.

I can't help but laugh at her frustration with herself. "I know, Elle." And I don't mind at all, because she's not the only one tearing up, and I don't have the excuse she does.

We linger in this moment another minute before I give in and acknowledge the truth told by the dashboard clock. "Come on, we've got to get you to your flight. Go have dinner with your dad, then go home and call me and I'll tell you again. And the next time you feel overwhelmed, call me then too, and I'll keep telling you."

There's a lot I need to catch up on after getting back from the airport—stuff like work and laundry and groceries that had no chance at my attention so long as Elle was here—but first I've got another overdue conversation to take care of.

"Hello?" It doesn't sound like Mr. Evans recognizes the number calling him.

"Mr. Evans, hi. It's Noah."

"Ah, Noah. I was wondering how long it would take. And I've told you before to call me Mike."

"That was a long time ago, sir. I wasn't going to assume." A long time and a bad breakup and a surprise pregnancy ago, so a lot of reasons to err on the side of formality.

"What you call me isn't what I've been losing sleep over, Noah."

So this is off to a great start. At least there was some humor in his voice when he said that. I think. I may as well cut to the chase.

"I apologize for not calling sooner. I was… still figuring some things out. That I needed to talk to Elle about first. But I want you to know how seriously I am taking all of this. And that I'm going to be there for Elle, in whatever way she wants me there. And I'm sorry I let it get so bad between us that Elle didn't feel like she could tell me for so long. If I'd had any idea she was pregnant, I would have been there that day. I hope you know that." I'm rambling. I feel like I'm eighteen again and trying to convince him I'm not his worst nightmare.

"The both of you made yourselves a fine mess with this. But you're talking now, that's the important thing. Look, Noah, I don't know what exactly happened between you, but I know what I've witnessed for the last couple years. The avoiding each other was ridiculous when it was just you two, but it cannot happen again, now. You're going to have to keep talking, no matter what. You understand that, I hope."

"Completely."

"But I also hope you know you'll always have my support. Both of you, and regardless of whether you're together or not. And I'm sorry I couldn't convince Elle to tell you sooner. I do know you would have been there, if she'd let you."

"Thank you, sir. Mike, I mean."

"Please tell me you've told your parents, now?"

"Not yet." I hear him sigh with exasperation. "Elle wants it to be in person, so I'm going to come down in two weeks. Once Dad gets back to town."

"Yes, well, Elle's found a lot of reasons for putting off telling people. As you know. Don't let it go any longer or I'll stop giving vague answers when your mom asks about Elle."

"Understood."

"Look, Noah, I know Elle thinks your parents and I are going to expect you two to have some kind of grand plan all figured out. And I suspect she fears we're going to pressure you to make decisions about your relationship sooner than you might otherwise. So I'll tell you what I told her, and maybe you can get her to believe it—that I just need to know you two are talking and want to make this work. Whatever making this work turns out to look like. That's all."

I'm not sure my dad is going to be as level-headed about the situation as Elle's. But at least Mike's in our corner.

Elle calls me later that night as she's getting ready for bed. We're no longer pretending to need any reason for these calls other than to hear each other's voices. I'd say it's back to old habits, but the part when she wishes me good night from Dino is definitely new. New and still a little terrifying to think about in detail, but I'm going to take my own advice and not overthink it. I discover as I get into bed that Elle left behind the shirt she'd slept in and I'm not sure if it was absent-mindedness or an intent to mark her territory. The shirt, unsurprisingly, still smells like her, as does the pillow she used. It's going to be a hell of a long two weeks.

It feels odd on Monday morning to be back in my routine as if nothing has changed. Not quite nothing, of course. I have an entertaining stare-off with two of the interrupting students when I see them at practice; I'm pretty sure the glare I give them will only make them more convinced the story is gossip worth repeating. The news also seems to be spreading from the younger teachers who were at Saturday's party to the more senior teaching staff, so I enjoy a few more rounds of congratulations, along with questions about what this means for me next year. It's a reminder that I need to start working on the job search and the move, and that evening I start figuring out what connections I have in LA.

Mickey has taken to sending me Elle updates and pictures. I'm not entirely sure she's told Elle she's doing this, especially since most of the pictures seem to have been taken without Elle noticing, but I'm not going to be the one to snitch. Or maybe Elle does know, given their whole agreement about no secret meddling; either way, it's nice to know someone's looking out for Elle when I can't be. Elle would hate to hear me put it that way, and I know she doesn't need looking out for… but I still wish I could. And in my absence, I'm glad she's got Mickey, and I'm glad I've got Mickey's updates. Even if the pictures aren't helping at all with how endlessly the days seem to be stretching.

Adam hasn't asked yet how the rest of the weekend went, but I know I owe him more of the story. For now he sticks to smirking at me whenever he catches me looking at my phone. It's true I've been messaging Elle a lot, in the hopes of distracting her from overthinking, and I guess I'm not being particularly covert about it.

"And that's five." Adam announces to the table at lunch on Wednesday.

I must have missed what we were talking about. "Sorry, what?"

"Text messages. That was the fifth you've sent since we sat down, and don't think we don't know to whom they're going. Parker and I have a bet going on whether you'll hit ten before we're done eating, so, please, don't stop on my account, Noah."

I roll my eyes at all of them. "Glad to see you have nothing more interesting to talk about."

"More interesting than your recently-revealed secret life and transformation into a lovesick teenager? Unlikely. How is the lovely and glowing Elle?" Gwen asks.

"Great. Mine. Not a subject for lunch gossip."

"Oooh, touchy. It's only been three days since she left, you shouldn't be this cranky yet. But now we know why you've been grumpy all winter." Parker laughs.

"If you're wondering why I waited so long to say anything… this. This is why. Tomorrow I'm going to sit with the actual teenagers, because they can't possibly be worse."

Adam is grinning at me from across the table, but he keeps quiet. He seeks me out later, though, and informs me that he's coming over with takeout tonight and has cleared his evening for however long the story takes to tell.

Telling Adam our story is a weird experience. Some of it I'm not sure I've ever needed to tell anyone before. The high school crowd didn't need to be told that Elle had been in my life forever, but always as Lee's other half, and they definitely didn't need to be told of my track record before Elle, or how unlikely our pairing should have been. But we also never told our classmates what exactly happened, of how we got from that incredibly public first kiss to my ill-fated appearance at prom, or from there to being inseparable. My Harvard friends, on the other hand, never heard any of the high school drama. As far as they knew, Elle and I had been dating forever, and the only challenge we'd faced was that year of long distance before she joined me in Boston. Then they heard about the break up, of course, but only my bitter version of it, and they watched me try very hard to prove to myself and everyone else how very over her I wanted to be. And then October, well - until today Lee and Mickey were the only ones who knew much about that weekend.

So actually telling our story from the start is a new experience, and some of Adam's questions make me rethink things I'd never thought much about before. And some just point out how frequently I've been an idiot.

"So let me get this straight. You went around literally ordering guys not to ask her out, but you didn't realize why? Or did you actually believe this was just normal brotherly protectiveness? Because I have a pack of older sisters, and they never once threatened my crushes. I mean, you didn't go around telling girls not to date Lee, right? That didn't clue you in that maybe, just maybe, you had a different, less brotherly, motive where Elle was involved?" Adam laughs disbelievingly.

"Lee's a guy. I didn't think I needed to worry about him the same way. And don't give me that look, Elle's already informed me how sexist that distinction was. And yeah, I was in denial for a long time. She was Lee's best friend, she'd been in my life forever, and I never once thought of her the same way I thought of all the other girls. It just took a while to figure out that wasn't for the reasons I thought."

Adam's also surprised by the number of my high school stories that involve getting into fights. I suppose it's a good sign if that part of my past seems out of character now. I guess Elle was right about my ability to change. Or maybe Elle was my ability to change.

I downplay Lee's initial opposition to us. We've hashed that out between us and with Elle, and Lee's squarely on our side now, so Adam doesn't need to know how bad it once was.

But I also don't sugarcoat the story for Adam. I'm honest about the difficulties we had with the distance, about the time it took for me to accept Elle would always have guy friends, and for Elle to believe she really was the only girl I wanted. About what an ass I made of myself when Elle turned down Stanford and I made her very sensible decision all about me. About the time it took for us to find the right balance between being together and also having our own independent college lives and friends.

I don't only tell Adam about the hard parts, of course; I also tell him how great things were most of the time. Some of the highlights he already heard on Saturday, when Elle and I were telling stories. Some of it I tell him now, like that summer we practically lived together, Lee for once out our way.

"So what happened, seriously?" Adam interrupts. "Because I know you guys weren't together when you moved here, and from what Elle said this weekend, she's been back in LA for a long time. How did you get from so happy in Boston to whatever was going on before this October? All I know so far is Lee saying you guys had some giant breakup, but he didn't tell us why, other than you being an idiot. And when we asked you about her back then, you practically bit our heads off. But Saturday you told me you've been in love with her for six years. So, what the hell?"

What the hell indeed. I'm not sure the truth is going to make any more sense, but I might as well launch into that chapter of the story.

"First, bear in mind that me being an idiot is Lee's default explanation for everything, especially anything that goes wrong between me and Elle. But he's right in this case. At least mostly."

And so I tell Adam about Mike's accident, about Elle and I rushing back to LA, that sleepless week in the hospital, and then that fight exploding out of nowhere.

"Not that I figured this out until recently, but we were so focused on protecting each other that we didn't actually listen to each other. I couldn't imagine not staying with Elle. It seemed so simple, so obvious. Her family needed her in LA, and we needed to be together. So we'd stay in LA and college would wait. But that's not how she saw it. She'd just had her whole world turned upside down, all her plans interrupted, and she couldn't bear to drag me down with her and wreck my life too, or so she saw it. And neither of us heard what the other was saying. Elle thought I didn't think she could take care of herself, of her family, on her own. That I was sacrificing myself to rescue her when she didn't need rescuing. I thought Elle wasn't taking us seriously if she couldn't understand why I'd want to stay. That maybe we weren't on the same page after all, especially after the whole marriage debacle."

"The what? You guys were talking marriage?"

"Not exactly. But I'd let the hospital believe we were married, so the doctors would talk to me, and then when Elle was telling me not to stay in LA, she made this comment about how we weren't actually married. And the way she said it, like the very idea was ridiculous - it felt like a punch in the gut. Like she thought our relationship meant so much less than I did. Because, after that summer… that's where I thought we were headed. So I overreacted, escalated, made everything worse."

"And, Elle just wasn't dealing well in general. I don't think I've told you this yet, but she'd lost her mom already, to cancer, when Elle was fifteen. Almost losing her dad, too, sent her into a tailspin, but I didn't see it then, didn't realize I was making everything worse. That I was making it all about our relationship when I should have just been worrying about Elle. Anyway, it's a long story and not all mine to tell, but the final result was both of us furious and hurt on opposite sides of the country. And we just never made it past that. Until October. Well, we didn't actually make it past that in October, either. I thought we had, but then we basically… reenacted the breakup."

And so we reach this year, and I tell Adam the basics. The closer we get to current events, the less I feel like sharing the details. Elle can tell him more, if she wants. Or maybe I will when this is safely in the rearview mirror.

Adam's finally all caught up, and it's also now incredibly late.

"Alright, I think the next part will have to wait for another day." Adam comments.

"The next part? That's all of it." I think Adam might know more of it than even Lee does, now.

"All of it so far. But this story isn't over, right?"

Ah, I see. "No. Definitely not over." Hopefully not ever over.

"Yeah, that was pretty obvious this weekend. So if you want to talk about what's next, let me know. If you're not too busy texting her like a lovesick teenager. When are you seeing her?"

"Weekend after next, to tell my parents."

"Oooh, that should be fun. But I'm worried you might not survive that long. This level of pining cannot be healthy."

I roll my eyes at him, but no, it's not healthy at all.

(Elle)

Dad doesn't ask much about my trip to San Francisco, but it's probably obvious how happy I am. I do tell him Noah's planning to move back to LA, which doesn't seem to surprise him at all, and that we're planning to tell the Flynns in two weeks, which he clearly thinks is just more of my foot dragging. Dad offers to invite the Flynns for Sunday lunch that weekend, and maybe that's the easiest way to break the news, with Dad and Brad there to cheer us on.

I tell Mickey a lot more about the weekend than I told Dad, and having a confidante who's not also Noah's brother is a definite improvement. I mean, Lee and I talk about the weekend too, but there are details best left unshared with him. Like how tempted I was to miss my flight, or how impossibly, frustratingly long two weeks now seems. Those topics I reserve for Mickey.

As for Noah, he seems to be on a mission to keep me too distracted to worry or overthink. The messages roll in every morning when I wake up and whenever he gets a break during the day, mostly casual updates and questions about my day and silly memes, but there's sentimental stuff mixed in too. Old pictures, songs we both loved, references to our favorite adventures. And then there are the messages that I'm sure are intended to drive me crazy. A picture of the Hollywood sign. A mention that he has keys to all the labs at the school, and that none have security cameras. He sends stuff like this at random, unrelated to any part of our conversation, and then moves right back on to other topics, ignoring any exasperated response I send.

As the week stretches on, the prospect of a weekend without Noah feels increasingly depressing. I spent two years getting used to not seeing him, and then five months hiding from him, but now not even two weeks of being back in each other's orbit has me counting the hours until our next visit. I'm almost grateful to the mountain of work I've got to tackle this weekend for providing a distraction.

I spend Friday afternoon and early evening at the library hammering out an outline for a term paper and preparing a research update for my advisor. Around eight my phone buzzes twice, and when I see it's Mickey messaging me, I figure I'm due for a break.

You still at the library? Come back to the apartment.

You need dinner. Or second dinner, knowing you.

I'm channeling my frustration into extreme productivity. But I do need a break. Thai takeout and bad TV?

Sorry, I'm out with the boy.

So why did you tell me to come home?

Because I need you to do me a favor and swing by the apartment.

Sure, what?

I left something for you. Cookies. I left cookies for you.

The favor you need is that you made me cookies?

Yes. Go home.

And it's critical I go home now, because there are cookies?

Stop being difficult and just go home, Elle.

Oh god, is this a surprise party?

It's not remotely my birthday. Maybe a baby shower? But Mickey wouldn't spring that on me. At least I hope not. And it's too soon, right?

You're so paranoid. I forgot to cover the cookies and don't want another ant invasion. And I'm already at Gabe's.

Fine. These cookies better be epic.

I'm confident you'll think so.

I'm still a little suspicious I'm going to open my door and walk into a surprise baby shower. Mickey could at least have given me a heads up so I could have worn something cute. But our building did have a gross ant invasion last fall, so maybe Mickey really is just worried about the cookies sitting out too long.

I pause before opening the door to listen carefully. Hearing nothing, I very slowly open the door and peek my head in. The lights are on, there are no decorations, everything looks just as I left it this morning, and I still hear nothing. So it really was just cookies Mickey wanted me to come home for. Except -

"Shelly, why are you creeping into your own apartment like a cat burglar?"

Apologies for the slightly later than usual upload!