Were her feet not still slightly sore from dancing when she woke up, Amelia might have believed that the night prior had all been a dream. It had certainly unfolded in a bizarre enough way to be unreal, and everything had happened so fast. One minute, she was closed off, desiring to be nothing more than a shadow lingering in the corners of the ballroom; the next, she cracked open, her feelings all laid bare against Henry's lips.

Henry. She wondered what in the world he was thinking right now.

He'd said he was going to call her today, but as she lingered in bed and stared up at the slow rotation of her ceiling fan, she was suddenly worried that he wouldn't. Now that it was a new day and she was back in the quotidian setting of her own room, it was much easier to recall how curt he'd been with her when he walked away than how sublime it had felt during those moments when they had seemed to be in agreement, when his mouth moved with hers.

But she had to give him the benefit of the doubt and she had to give him time—it was hardly ten in the morning yet. He might be busy today, preoccupied, and Amelia was not the center of his universe or any other one. Even the sun, in all its brilliant, blazing glory, was only the core of one singular solar system within one galaxy out of trillions of galaxies in the entire universe. And what was she compared to that?

She could wait for a phone call.

She was used to anxiety. It was practically a cohabitant in her body at this point, a second entity that resided within her. But what she wasn't used to was Henry being the source of her anxiety, and as hard as she tried not to think about it as she went about her day, it really sucked. She was used to him being the opposite of what was weighing her down—a source of reassurance, an antidote. This was unknown territory and she wasn't a fan of it at all.

When it was mid-afternoon, when lunchtime had already come and gone and he still hadn't called, Amelia began to feel a little more uneasy about it. She paced around her apartment, wishing she had more chores she needed to do today to distract herself with. Eventually, she caved in and called Natasha.

"I think I might have screwed up with Henry," she blurted as soon as Nat had answered, her face popping up on Amelia's screen in an arrangement of blurry pixels.

"What happened?"

"Promise you're not going to judge me."

She didn't really know why she was asking now when Nat had already kept such a level head for her sake throughout everything that had happened with Colton. It was a defense mechanism, she supposed.

"Of course I'm not gonna judge."

"I might have..." Her cheeks were already flushed and she hadn't spit it out yet. "...kissed him a little bit."

Though she looked momentarily surprised, Natasha managed to wipe the expression off of her face. Mostly, at least—her eyebrows were still raised ever so slightly.

"I didn't know it was like that between you guys."

"I didn't really know either—or at least not the extent of it—until it just was."

"Well, how did he react? I'm going to assume the answer is not great since you called me."

"Not great," Amelia agreed grimly. "I mean, he seemed to like kissing me, I guess. But then the second it was over he seemed to instantly regret it. And he said he'd call me today but he hasn't."

"Maybe he's just busy?"

"I hope that's it," she sighed. "I really don't know what I'm going to do if I scared him off."

"If one little kiss scared him off so badly that he won't even have a conversation with you, he probably wasn't worth your time anyway."

Amelia laughed; she found it relieving to be able to laugh. "Maybe not. I don't know what I was thinking, though."

"Feelings are messy sometimes," Nat reminded her. "Case in point: me dating Liam when I definitely should have just been his friend."

Amelia couldn't help the small snickering sound that slipped out of her. "That makes an excellent story now, though."

Nat was grinning. "Maybe you and Henry can laugh this off one day, too."

Her optimism started to sputter out again like a dying flame. "That's the thing, though...I don't know if I want him to be a passing thing that I just can laugh off. I know I might sound crazy, but..."

She swallowed. "Henry isn't just a rebound for me. I wouldn't have kissed someone else so soon if I didn't really like him. It's just...it's just different with him. I don't know how to explain it."

Nat listened to her carefully, never belittling or poking fun at her feelings. One of her best qualities as a friend—and as a human being in general—was her ability to grasp that Amelia's emotions were all very real and raw to her even if no one else around her could fully understand what she was feeling or why.

"I think he really likes you, too," she said gently.

"You were in a room with him for all of five minutes," Amelia pointed out.

"Sometimes five minutes is all you need."

"...What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means that I think he's gonna call you," Nat smiled. "I really do. He might be just as nervous as you are, you know."

That was true. She wished she knew Henry well enough to know what he would be thinking right now, but what she did know was that whether he was feeling more positively or negatively about it, his emotions would be substantial regardless. This wasn't the sort of thing that he would just brush off—he felt everything even more intensely than Amelia did. And he had an incomprehensible amount of different feelings to cope with these days.

"Yeah," she said quietly. "Yeah, I...I need to be patient with him. Thanks for stopping me from spiraling."

"That's what friends are for."

"See you tomorrow."

"Now, go enjoy the rest of your Sunday," Nat nudged her. "And try not to panic."

"I'll try."

By the time evening rolled around, Amelia had all but given up on receiving a call that day. She actually wasn't feeling terribly about it. She also wasn't feeling great, obviously, but she'd managed to come to terms with the probable reality that he had a good excuse for not calling yet. Likewise, she was forgiving herself for getting so worked up about it—it wasn't like she had a shortage of reasons to question men's motives. She'd become less paranoid with time, she hoped, but everything was still too fresh right now.

She showed herself a little bit of love by doing a face mask, putting on her comfiest pajamas, and tossing her blankets in the dryer for a few minutes to warm them up before she crawled under them.

Naturally, that was when her phone decided to start ringing.

Her heart jumped a beat like it'd been shocked out of rhythm, and she quickly pulled up the front-facing camera to make sure that she didn't have any remnants of skin products on her cheeks before she answered.

Henry looked worn out, the circles under his eyes pronounced, and a small, quiet breath left his lips when he saw her.

"God, I'm sorry. I know I told you I'd call. It's just been like a freaking civil war with my family today over this note."

"It's okay—your family's more important than calling me."

"The more I read it, the more I think there's no way someone isn't pressuring her to write those things. I mean, it doesn't sound like her at all." He gave a small, wry laugh. "The Lily I know gave up a long time ago on telling me not to worry about her 'cause she knows I'm gonna do it anyway."

Amelia frowned. "Do you think it could be whoever was helping her get her prescription?"

"Maybe. Probably." He rubbed his tired eyes. "It's hard to guess when I have no idea how many people we're dealing with here. But I think...I think there's someone out there who's trying to stop us from looking."

Her skin started to prickle with goosebumps. Here, in the quiet of her room with only a bedside lamp on, it was easy to let her mind follow Henry down this eerie rabbit trail.

"Does Liam agree with you?" she asked.

"Yeah. And I want us to keep digging—I have no idea where the hell to start, but there's gotta be something else we can do. Her parents made me hand the note over to them, though. I guess they're hiring a private investigator and want to give it to him."

Her heart panged with sympathy for him. She couldn't imagine how difficult it must be to try to relinquish control of something so important over to someone else, but she tried to be encouraging.

"I know you have your doubts about that, but having a professional's help has to be a good thing, right?"

"I hope so," he said quietly, his lips barely moving. "I just—it was addressed to me and Liam, you know? It feels wrong for us to be doing nothing."

"You're doing as much as you possibly can," Amelia murmured, wishing that she could reach through the phone to give him a hug. "But you're not a superhuman, Henry. I don't know how you've even managed to do as much as you have while staying on top of everything else. And your parents—I'm sure they just want you to be safe, too."

His expression shifted, like something else in him was starting to crack. "I'd give up my safety in a heartbeat for her," he said, his voice thick.

"I know," she told him as gently as she could. "But I could see how much your mom and dad love you. They're already missing their niece; I'm sure they're scared of something happening to their son, too."

"Yeah," he said hollowly. "I'm sure they are."

He went silent for a minute, or maybe it was only seconds—the time felt dense and slow, as if it was traveling underwater. Amelia wondered if she'd said something wrong.

"Sorry," she mumbled. "Did I just kill the mood?"

The corners of his lips tilted up into a smile. "I'm not sure what the mood was in the first place. I rather think that was the point of me calling you."

"I was scared you wouldn't," she explained, despite it sounding very silly after the conversation they'd just had.

"I'm sorry. I know I didn't treat you very well last night."

"I shouldn't have started anything while you were already upset."

His eyebrows quirked up. "Did you start it or did I start it?"

Amelia covered her face with her free hand. "Stop making me second guess everything," she huffed through her fingers; she could hear him lightly laughing as he apologized again.

"Will you look at me?"

She obliged, slowly lowering her hand.

"...Can I come see you?" he asked tentatively. "I know that might be asking a lot, but I'd much rather talk in person."

That sporadic flutter of her heart returned. The cynical piece of her brain yelled that she was in her pajamas and that they should really just meet up at a more reasonable hour, but she'd already waited all day for this. She wasn't going to be able to sleep, wasn't going to be able to think about her job tomorrow if all she was thinking about was him.

And it was impossible to ignore the fact that he just might even let her kiss him again.

So she murmured a small, "I'd like that."