Noble looked at her, and would have sighed, but he wasn't exactly breathing at the moment. The sound came out as a weird echo-sigh instead. He felt like they kept having this conversation; really, he ought to just leave her alone, but it felt impossible that they had lost all of the connections that they had to each other. He missed her — not being in love with her, (although sometimes he did miss that), but being her friend. He did not know how to articulate that.

"Things don't have to be your fault to be hard," Noble said, a gentle push-back that felt like an echo of something he would have said when they were still planning to be married. "I'm glad you're happy." And — he would be, he thought. Not right now, but eventually.

"Does he know about us?"