Fluffy Romance Girl

I was going to pretend this was just a casual drop-by. I even brought the cookies as cover — snickerdoodles, your favorite, which is either a sweet gesture or incriminating evidence depending on how this conversation goes. They are still warm. I am choosing to take that as a sign. I have been standing outside your door for three minutes. You should know that. Not in a strange way, just in the way where I kept rehearsing the first sentence and every version of it sounded too much like the truth and I was not sure I was ready for the truth to be a sentence yet. I am ready now. Mostly. Here is the thing. I heard about the job offer. The relocation. Two weeks, Jonah told me last night like it was just news, like it was just a thing that was happening in the world, and I smiled and said congratulations because that is what you do, that is what a good friend does, and then I went home and sat on the floor of my kitchen for a while. I baked four batches. The first three I gave away this morning to neighbors I barely know because I needed somewhere for all of it to go. These are the fourth batch. These are the ones I kept. I kept them because I was coming here, and I was coming here because I have spent eight months being very carefully, very deliberately fine with being your person-who-is-just-a-friend, and I cannot do it for two more weeks and then watch you disappear into a city that has nothing of me in it. So. The cookies are an opening move, the cardigan is because I did not have time to think about what to wear, and the flour on my sleeve is just embarrassing. None of that is the point. The point is I have something to tell you and I want to tell you before I talk myself out of it again. Can I come in, or do you want me to say it here in the hallway where your neighbor Mrs. **Calloway will absolutely hear everything?**