“Would you consider sixty years old to be middle-aged?” Juliet says, briefly distracted.

“Yeah,” I say after a second of thinking. “Forties to sixties is middle-aged in my mind.”

“Me too,” Aurora says with a decisive nod.

“Felix will look so good in his forties,” Juliet adds with a dreamy sigh.

She is not wrong. Forget about his forties, for that matter—Felix looks goodnow.

Not that I need to be thinking about how he looks or doesn’t look, because I don’t. At all.

“But you’re right,” Aurora goes on, “that would feel super weird, Indy.” She looks at me intently. “Do you think he felt anything?”

“Maybe,” I say slowly. “The way he was talking, his voice—I kind of think he did. But then later he seemed totally normal?”

“Does that mean he felt it?” she says with a little frown.

“It could,” Jules says. “Like maybe he felt awkward so he tried to act normal so things wouldn’t change between you.”

“I don’t know,” I say with a sigh. “I don’t have feelings for him. I just don’t want things to be weird.” I pause. “He probably has moments with women all the time, right?”

“Maybe?” Juliet says, biting her lip. She looks at me for a second and then says, “Do you want to ask Poppy?”

“No way,” Aurora says. She tugs her white comforter further up her lap. “She’d spill to Cyrus.”

“Not if we make her swear not to tell,” Juliet says. “She keeps secrets.”

They look at me as I deliberate; they can probably see the wheels turning in my brain.

This could be nothing. But it could be something. And I can figure out what to do either way, but I need to know first if it’snothingorsomething. If anyone will be able to tell me, it’s Poppy. She knows Felix better than I do.

“Yeah, let’s do it,” I say with a sigh.

Juliet nods with a businesslike expression and reaches underneath the covers; then she pulls out her phone. She punches a few buttons and puts it on speaker; we listen as it rings.

A few seconds later, Poppy answers. “Hey, babe,” she says brightly. “What are you up to?”

“It’s all of us,” Juliet says. “India needs your advice, but we have to swear you to silence first. You cannot tell Cy.”

“I am a vault of secrecy,” Poppy says immediately. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” I say, but it’s more of a groan. “I feel like I maybe had a moment with Felix earlier? And I can’t tell if I imagined it or not, and I know I shouldn’t be worried, but I kind of am.” The words spill out of me at top speed, my hands still fiddling with the pillow on my lap. “We were both talking normally afterward, but I guess I’m just…nervous.”

Poppy responds more quickly than I expect; she’s silent for only a few seconds before she speaks. “Honestly, India, I wouldn’t stress about it,” she says, her voice warm and sure. “Even if it was random or awkward. Felix won’t get hung up on something like that.”

“He won’t, right?” I say. “Because I just want things to be normal.”

“I really think they will be,” she says. She hesitates and then goes on, “You seem pretty upset, though.”

“I’m not upset,” I say, and it’s not a lie, exactly. “I’m more just…happy with the way things are going. And I don’t want to mess with any—feelingsstuff. That’s all.”

“So you guys are getting along well, I guess?” she says, and I nod.

“Surprisingly well,” I admit. “We bicker, but that’s sort of just how we communicate. I like him a lot. He’s funny. He’s cool.” I hesitate, my mind flitting through the other things I could say—that even though Felix “blackmailed” me into doing this with him, I didn’t exactly put up much of a fight. And when he gave me an out earlier, I breezed right past it like it wasn’t even there.

“But we really are just friends,” I finally say, “and I don’t want to stress about anything else. That’s all.”

The words are comfortable on my tongue, convincing enough that I believe them, but they don’t ease the feeling in my chest—the little haze of warmth that lingers even now when I remember that moment in the shop, or the conversation in our driveway.