In normal circumstances, Amelia was not all that great at reflecting on the state of her life in any truly constructive manner. It wasn't for a lack of trying, though perhaps she didn't always try hard enough. She remembered how back in college, every time one of her roommates had somehow convinced her to try out mindfulness meditation just one more time, she left feeling like it had gone abysmally. But now, as a September Sunday morning ushered in the beginning of a brand new week and she thought of all that had transpired recently, it was hard to believe how different her everything had seemed just a month ago from the life she was experiencing now.

Pieces of her wished that they could revert to that state, that familiar place of denial. But rather than allow herself to miserably stew on those kinds of thoughts all day long, Amelia set out with the goal of reminding herself in whatever small ways she could that her life was better off this way.

The sun was peeking out from behind the clouds, just enough to leave a warm kiss on the skin that reminded her more of spring than autumn. She decided that some time outdoors would do her some good, so she grabbed an old quilt and one of the unread books off of her shelf, filled up her water bottle, and headed to her favorite park for a little lie-down in the sunlight. She had to scroll through her playlists for a couple of minutes to find a happy one that would be acceptable for her car ride, refusing to touch any of the nauseatingly sappy ones she'd made while she was with Colton because she knew they'd still remind her too much of him.

The park was decently crowded, as was to be expected on any weekend morning as pleasant as this one, but she managed to find a patch of grass that felt relatively secluded from anyone else and spread her blanket out, its worn, multicolored edges fluttering in the breeze like the blades of grass around her even once she was laying on it. The stiff spine of her book made a small crinkling sound when she opened it.

Seconds bled into minutes as she disappeared in its pages, sequestered in her own little world until her phone started vibrating. She glanced at the screen; Henry was trying to FaceTime her.

After setting down her book and quickly adjusting her wind-mussed hair, she answered. "Good morning."

He appeared to still be very much in bed, propped up against a pile of pillows. He didn't even have his glasses on yet; it was the first time she'd seen him without them.

"Good morning," he smiled. "I meant to call you yesterday and ask if Natasha seemed okay after the whole thing Friday night."

"She was okay. There weren't any hard feelings towards him, if that's what you mean. If anything, I think what made her sad was to see that he's having such a hard time right now."

Henry nodded. "Yeah, I was obviously trying to talk to him a little bit after you guys left without being ridiculously insensitive about it. He was glad to know that she's doing well, but I think he would have preferred to see her under happier circumstances if they were going to run into each other again."

"I almost feel a little guilty for accidentally orchestrating that," Amelia admitted. "But I can't say I've ever had the problem where a random guy I mention to someone actually turns out to be her ex-boyfriend, so I'm not sure there was any way to see that coming."

Henry laughed, and she liked that he did—it made her feel like she was a funnier person than she actually was.

"I wouldn't worry about it too much. I mean, sure, it was a big surprise for them, but I think it was an even bigger one for us."

She felt herself grinning. "Nat is never a boring person to have as your friend, that's for sure."

She watched as Henry shifted positions slightly, reaching off to one side to grab something that she quickly saw were his glasses. He blinked a couple of times once he had them on, his eyes adjusting.

"You look like you're somewhere very warm and sunny," he noticed.

"You look like you're still in bed."

The corners of his lips pulled back up into a smile. "I won't deny it."

"I'm just at the park," she explained, then shyly offered, "You could come tag along if you don't have anything else you need to be doing."

It was almost embarrassing that she already wanted to see him again when they'd just hung out on Friday night, but there was something about his presence that calmed her in a way that her own company didn't. She didn't think it negated that she was trying to work on enjoying being by herself more, but she needed to be surrounded by the right people if she was ever going to thrive.

"I don't," he said. "I'm obviously not ready, but as long as you don't mind waiting for me..."

She held up her book with her free hand. "Take your time. I'll just be here hanging out with my book."

She let Henry go so that he could work on dragging himself out of bed and coming to meet up with her. She picked her novel back up, but her reading turned more into skimming as her mind drifted off to him. It was impossible not to wonder if he might lay down next to her on the blanket like he had on his bedroom floor, their hands tentatively gliding over one another.

Just the thought was making her cheeks go rosy—she was being completely, utterly ridiculous. She didn't need to be thinking about him, about anyone, that way so soon after ending things with Colton. And yet she was incapable of detaching Henry from all of those convoluted emotions when he had come into her life just as everything was taking its darkest turn for her. She couldn't stop herself from wanting him just a little bit when he was the complete opposite of the thing that had ruined her.

Amelia buried her face in the blanket and sighed.

It took him a solid half an hour or so to get to her, and yet it felt like she only had a few minutes to pull herself together and snap out of these bizarre thoughts. She did not have a crush on Henry Caruso. She did not.

And even if she did—which she didn't—surely he was in too much distress about everything else happening in his life to think about her that way, right? Or was it possible that he felt the same way she did, caught up in this emotional cyclone and grasping just to distinguish up from down?

There was a chance that they were only fueling each other's confusion even further, but it wasn't like she could just ask him about it.

He'd texted her when he was about ten minutes away, so she was anticipatory but not surprised when she saw his silhouette in the near distance. It was warm enough out today to wear short sleeves; as he got closer, she could see the tapestry of black tattoos on his left arm, those interwoven stories that unfolded on skin rather than on paper. She wanted to ask him about their meaning sometime, but she wasn't sure if any of them might be too personal and didn't want to accidentally cross a line that she didn't know was in front of her.

She smiled as he came and sat down next to her on the quilt, looking much more awake now than he had on the phone. The sunlight seemed to mirror his pleasant mood, kissing him as gracefully as if he were in a painting. The way it gleamed off the edges of his hair made the fine strands appear almost golden, the sky the same shade as his eyes as he tilted his chin up slightly to greet the warmth of the day.

Amelia wouldn't have blamed him if he wanted to lay back on the blanket and doze off again in the sun, but when he looked over at her, he seemed entirely present, not drowsy at all.

"Thanks for sharing your blanket," he grinned.

"Thanks for getting out of bed for me. Have you even had breakfast yet?"

"I didn't want to keep you waiting," he replied. "So, no. But I think there's a coffee shop a couple of blocks from here—we could grab something if you wanted to."

There was hardly a time when a coffee and pastry didn't sound good to Amelia. "Only if I'm paying. You've already given me a lot of free food."

"If you insist."

So she climbed to her feet and offered her hands to help him up. He accepted, his fingers wound firmly between hers for just a couple of seconds before he was standing up and they were letting go of each other. She shook the grass off of her blanket—giving Henry a fair warning first so that he could stand a few feet back—stuffed it and the book into the backpack she'd brought them in, and then they were off to the coffee shop.

The length of his arm brushed against hers for nearly their entire stroll—they were attempting to stay side by side without becoming those infuriating people who take up the entire sidewalk. The cafe was located on a busy corner, so Amelia wasn't surprised to see that it looked pretty crowded, but she wasn't in any sort of rush this morning. All she really cared about was being able to find an open table and there appeared to still be a handful of those left.

Henry held open the door for her; she smiled as she stepped inside and was greeted by intermingling scents of fresh coffee and baked goods. The air hummed with a pleasant abundance of sounds—the laugh of a stranger at a nearby table, espresso machines grinding up beans, a cash register drawer opening and then closing again. She appreciated this amount of background noise in a public space, just quiet enough that she didn't have to strain to hear who she was talking to yet loud enough that she didn't feel like her entire conversation was going to be overheard, but she saw Henry reach up to adjust his hearing aids and wondered how this all sounded to him. She hoped it wasn't too much like nails on a chalkboard.

They ordered at the counter—a latte for Amelia, an americano for Henry, and croissants for both of them—and received a little number card to place on their table to let the servers know which order was theirs. There was an open table near the back of the restaurant, a little further away from all of the commotion of people coming and going and deciding what to order, so they decided to situate themselves there. A tiny succulent in a glass jar was resting on the center of the table; she resisted the urge to touch its smooth-looking leaves to determine if it was real.

"Do you come here a lot?" she asked.

Now that she was here, she could recall popping in a few times over the years, but she wouldn't have remembered off the top of her head that it was so close to the park.

"Not super recently, no, but I was in here a decent amount back in school. I'd study here a lot and my parents would sometimes come by to eat with me."

She felt her lips curve up into a little crescent. "That's sweet."

"Both literally and figuratively," he agreed.

"If you're an expert on the menu, then these croissants better be very good."

"They are," he promised. "I wouldn't lead you astray like that—I take my baked goods very seriously."

"As everyone should."

Amelia was facing away from the entrance, but she heard another quiet clatter of the doorbell indicating that someone else had come or gone. Henry's eyes widened slightly as they drifted over her shoulder and towards the door.

"...What?" she asked just as he pressed his lips together like he was trying not to laugh.

"Speaking of my parents, I seem to have summoned them."

"What?"

She quickly looked over her shoulder and sure enough, the two people waiting at the back of the line to order were unmistakably his mom and dad. She'd never even seen a picture of them, but it was impossible not to know exactly who she was looking at from the moment her eyes landed on them—Henry was practically a younger copy of his father. She turned back to him, flustered for no obvious reason.

He looked mildly amused at the whole situation. "How do you feel about meeting them?"

They didn't appear to have noticed him and Amelia yet, but it was only a matter of time before they did. Her face felt warm; she instinctively smoothed her shirt even though there were hardly any wrinkles there. She hadn't dressed to impress—she'd dressed to lay in the grass.

But her outfit wasn't why she was embarrassed, not really.

"Are they, um," she mumbled. "Are they, like, gonna think we're on a–"

Henry's ears had gone slightly pink. "I think they might be more likely to think that if I make a point of hiding here in the corner and not introducing you."

"Oh." After a second, Amelia nodded. "Okay, yeah. Fair enough. Do I, uh, do I look alright? I don't want to make a bad impression–"

"I think it'd be very hard for you to make a bad impression," he stopped her, his eyebrows scrunching together like he was confused. "And of course you look alright."

She silently nodded again, already wanting to apologize for asking him to comment on her appearance but knowing she couldn't without it becoming more awkward than she'd already just made it. Having already seemed to have moved on from it, Henry was now attempting to subtly wave them over without making a scene out of it.

She watched as he managed to successfully catch his mother's eye; she suddenly went from wearing a contentedly neutral expression to beaming, nudging her husband to point out to him that their son was here. They'd made it to the register and hurried over as soon as they'd placed their order, his dad grabbing a couple of chairs for them along the way while Henry moved his own so that it was next to Amelia's.

"Hey, Mom," he smiled.

The woman in front of them, though she didn't look all that much like Henry, was undoubtedly beautiful. Dark hair fell well past her shoulders, its color contrasting nicely against an elegant beige sundress. Her complexion was fairer than her husband's and son's, but her eyes, Amelia realized, were the same light blue as Henry's. His dad's were brown, but aside from that and the lack of a tattoo sleeve or hearing aids, Amelia could have believed she was seeing what Henry was going to look like thirty years from now.

And even though his mom didn't all that closely resemble him in appearance, she exuded the same sort of collected calmness that Amelia had almost instantly noticed from Henry.

"Hi, sweetheart—I didn't think you'd even be awake yet," she said cheekily.

Henry narrowed his eyes; Amelia held back a giggle. "Thanks, Mom. This is my friend Amelia."

"It's a pleasure to meet you. I'm Jen, this is my husband Robert–"

"I can see the resemblance," Amelia grinned as they sat down, both of them shaking her hand. She noticed that Jen's nails were painted a dusty shade of rose. "Just a little bit."

"How do you two know each other?" his dad asked, curiously enough to come across as genuinely interested yet not quite assertive enough to be pushy. Amelia could hear just the slightest hint of an Italian accent left in his voice, whittled down by all the years of living in the States.

Henry jumped in for her so that she didn't have to do all of the talking. "We had a class together back in school and then ran into each other again pretty recently."

Amelia's mind was filtering through all the conversations she'd had with him to remember what all he told her about his parents. She recalled him saying that they usually got along quite well—was he conscious of the way they looked at him even now, like he was the center of their universe?—but that they weren't very keen on the idea of him trying to dig too much into Lily's disappearance himself. She wondered if it was for that reason that he didn't bring up the fact that they met at the search party or if he was simply reading the room and not wanting to sour the bright mood with such a dark topic.

"Oh, that's great," Jen said, and Amelia questioned what specifically she meant by that until she looked towards her and explained, "I actually teach at the college now. Computer science."

And Amelia thought that was kind of badass—way too many spaces in science and tech were still dominated by men. "That's awesome."

"But I must say," Jen continued. "As much as I adore teaching, these kids are already acting like they need their fall break even though the semester just started, so I'm feeling like I need a break, too."

She turned her chin over to her husband, lips tilting into a smile. "It's still easier than herding high schoolers, though."

"Maybe," he shrugged. "But I'd still think it's much easier to get them to understand history than computer science."

Jen squeezed his hand, turning her attention back towards Amelia. "We've been having this same debate for twenty years; I don't know why we keep trying."

Robert's hand was resting on the back of his wife's chair, fingers absentmindedly trailing on her shoulder. Amelia thought it was rather cute—the idea of her own parents showing that kind of affection towards each other was so foreign to her. Back when they had been happily married, which in itself felt like barely more than a fuzzy, distant memory, she couldn't recall them ever really doting over each other. They were never ones to show their love very outwardly. Even as a young child she'd noticed that much.

Perhaps that was why she found herself to be intrigued with his parents as they all amicably chatted over their breakfast, or maybe it could be more accurately traced back to the fact that she was intrigued with Henry and thus naturally interested in the people who'd raised him. Whatever the case, she rather enjoyed herself despite not thinking she was very good at small talk. Going into it, she'd half expected herself to be internally formulating a believable reason to be excused, but in the end, it was his parents who needed to leave first. Amelia and Henry didn't have any reason to stick around in the cafe after that—all four of them had emptied their plates and mugs a while ago—so they decided to wander on back towards the park.

The sun had drifted slightly higher in the sky now, its warmth touching them more noticeably but still not at all unpleasantly. She instinctively squinted slightly against the light, wishing she'd packed sunglasses in her bag.

"I think I want to be your mom when I grow up," she said earnestly.

That made him chuckle, a laugh as bright and clear as the sky above them.

"Yeah, she's cool," he grinned. "I'm lucky I get to have her as my mom."

"She's lucky she gets to have you as her kid."

He glanced over at her, his expression thoughtful but otherwise unreadable. "I'm not so sure about that, but thanks."

She was more than willing to argue with him on that, but her phone buzzed in her pocket before she got the chance to. She pulled it out just to check that it wasn't something important and saw that her mom had texted her.

Don't forget that Suzy's wedding is on Saturday!

Amelia's heart plummeted in her chest. Shit. She'd RSVP'd to that wedding ages ago with the intention of bringing Colton as her plus-one only to then completely forget about it. And there was no backing out—Suzy was one of their closest family friends and Amelia had already promised both of her parents that she'd be there.

But she'd been feeling very giddy and in love when she made that commitment, and now all she was going to feel was utterly lonely.

"Everything okay?" she heard Henry's voice ask from next to her.

Amelia stuffed her phone back into her pocket. "Relatively speaking," she managed, but her throat felt all tight and uncomfortable.

She'd never liked weddings. She'd always felt awkward at any sort of formal event, like a fish out of water. Although she knew that she was thinking selfishly, she really didn't want to go watch over people being in love while having to babysit her parents instead of getting to enjoy the evening with her now-nonexistent boyfriend.

"I have a wedding to go to with my parents next weekend," she said hollowly. "And I was originally looking forward to it, but, I, um...I was supposed to bring Colton with me."

They were already back at the edge of the park. Amelia sank onto a bench and looked up at the leaves swaying above her, embarrassed that she was on the verge of tears about something as inconsequential as going to someone else's wedding. As she felt Henry sit down next to her, she was determined not to create a repeat of what had happened on the bridge.

He didn't tell her he was being stupid. "Is it here in town?" he asked.

She nodded. "Yeah, why?"

"I know I can't do much to fix this for you. But if it gets to be too much and you just need a getaway car, you can text me. I won't mind."

"You don't have to do that," she mumbled.

"I'd much rather give you a ride than know you're feeling miserable," he told her gently. "But you don't have to take me up on it; just know the offer's there if you need it."

She took in a breath, then another, trying to soothe herself amidst the abrupt bout of anxiety that had risen up in her chest now that she was thinking about Colton again. All she could really do to respond to Henry in that moment was nod at him again, but when his eyes locked with hers, he silently leaned in to wrap her up in a hug.

She exhaled against his shoulder, half startled and half relieved. Her fingers tightened against the back of his shirt and then let go, opening and closing like the petals of a flower.

"This would be a good time to tell me if you happen to not like hugs," he whispered, and she laughed, and it felt good to be able to laugh right then.

"I like them," she promised.

But even as her momentary panic slowly receded, the fluttering of her heart remained, and she knew in her heart why that was even in the middle of wanting to deny it.

It was because her chin was resting on his shoulder, because she could feel the beating of his heart so close to hers, because he was holding her.

And it was because she didn't want any of those things to cease.

She closed her eyes for a second, denying all of those feelings so that she could let herself cling to him a little bit longer.

"It's weird," she said softly.

"What's weird?"

"I...realistically, I get that I barely know you," she admitted, and she shouldn't have been saying it out loud to him, and yet saying it out loud was the only way she was going to begin to wrap her own head around it. "...But it feels like I've known you for so long."

He drew back just enough to look at her, and he wasn't looking at her like she was crazy. On the contrary, he blinked, as if she'd actually just offered him some sort of clarity.

"Yeah," he agreed, his lips barely moving. "It's like I've known you for my whole life."

____________________

A/N:

shameless self-promotion: I may or may not have an entire prequel about henry's parents, so if you want to read about angsty 20-somethings in the '90s, feel free to check out The Dream Before the Dark. it doesn't contain spoilers for any of my other books since it takes place so long beforehand.

and shoutout to @bluettes for always being robert's #1 fan ♡