But every time her finger hovered over the send button, another postcard arrived.
Norway. A fjord so impossibly blue it hurt to look at.
Day 1: I fell in a stream today. Very undignified. Wish you were here to laugh at me. Also, your earring is safe. I'm treating it better than my camera equipment.
Sweden. A red cottage against pristine snow.
Day 2: Met a family who's lived in the same house for six generations. They asked if I had someone waiting for me back home. I said maybe. They said maybe isn't good enough. They're right.
Denmark. The colorful buildings of Nyhavn reflected in still water.
Day 3: Flying back tomorrow. Terrified you won't show up. More terrified that you will and I'll somehow mess this up. See you at Marcello's, 7pm. Please show up, Maya.
"You're smiling at a postcard like a psychopath," Sienna said, appearing in Maya's office doorway with coffee and judgment. "Spill."
Maya shoved the postcards into her desk drawer. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"You've been distracted all week. You rescheduled Mrs. Patterson twice. You forgot about our lunch yesterday." Sienna sat down uninvited, crossing her arms. "So either you're having a breakdown, or something happened at my wedding that you haven't told me about."
"I slept with your friend Ethan."
The words came out in a rush, unplanned. Sienna's eyes went wide.
"You WHAT?"
"Once. It was supposed to be a one-time thing. But then he started sending postcards and now I agreed to dinner tonight and I'm spiraling."
"Okay, backing up." Sienna held up her hands. "You Maya Chen, who hasn't gone on a date in two years slept with Ethan Walker. Ethan 'I don't stay in one place' Walker. Ethan 'commitment issues personified' Walker."
"When you say it like that, it sounds even worse."
"No, actually, it sounds perfect." Sienna leaned forward, her expression shifting from shock to something like hope. "You know what you two have in common? You're both terrified of the same thing. You're just using different strategies to avoid it."
"That doesn't make us compatible. That makes us a disaster."
"Or it makes you the only two people who could possibly understand each other." Sienna pulled out her phone, started typing. "What are you wearing?"
"I'm not going."
"You're absolutely going. And you're wearing that green sweater that makes you look like a romantic lead." She glanced up. "Also, I'm going to say something, and you're not going to like it."
"Then don't say it."
"Your mom would want you to go."
Maya's chest tightened. "That's not fair."
"Life's not fair. Your mom dying at fifty-three wasn't fair. You spending two years in emotional purgatory isn't fair." Sienna's voice softened. "But maybe this guy this broken, honest, leaving-in-six-weeks guy is exactly what you need. Not to fix you. Just to remind you that you're still alive."
Maya stared at her best friend, tears burning behind her eyes. "What if I fall for him and he leaves and I can't survive it?"
"What if you don't go and you spend the rest of your life wondering what if?"
Marcello's was a small Italian restaurant tucked into Maya's neighborhood intimate lighting, checkered tablecloths, the smell of garlic and possibility. Maya arrived at 7:03, intentionally late, and found Ethan already there.
He looked different than she remembered. Still handsome, but nervous checking his phone, running his hand through his hair, wearing a dark blue shirt that made his eyes impossible to ignore.
When he saw her, his entire face transformed.
"You came," he said, standing so fast he nearly knocked over his water glass.
"I came."
"I was sixty percent sure you'd cancel."
"It was closer to eighty percent." Maya slid into the chair across from him, hyperaware of every movement, every breath. "But apparently I'm a masochist."
"Or brave." He reached into his pocket, pulled out her earring. "As promised. I'm a man of my word."
Maya took it, their fingers brushing. The same electric shock as the wedding night. "Thank you."
"Thank you for giving me a chance to return it." His smile was crooked, self-deprecating. "I probably could have just mailed it."
"But then you wouldn't get free dinner."
"I'm paying."
"We'll see."
They ordered wine they were too nervous to drink and pasta they barely touched. The conversation started stilted polite questions about work and travel but gradually found its rhythm. The same rhythm from the wedding night. The same ease of being seen.
"Tell me about your mother," Ethan said suddenly. "The real version. Not the sanitized story you tell strangers."
Maya's fork paused halfway to her mouth. "Why do you want to know?"
"Because you mentioned her once and your entire face changed. Because I can tell she's the reason you ran that morning. Because I want to know what I'm up against."
Fair. Brutally, terrifyingly fair.
"She was a painter," Maya said quietly. "Semi-successful, always creating. She saw the world in colors and emotions, and she wanted me to do the same. But I was too careful. Too practical. I became a therapist because it felt safe helping others instead of risking myself."
"And she didn't like that?"
"She understood it. But she worried I was hiding. That I was so afraid of getting hurt I wasn't really living." Maya's throat tightened. "Our last conversation was her pushing me to take risks. To date someone I'd met, actually. I told her to stop interfering. Three days later, brain aneurysm. Gone."
Ethan was quiet for a long moment. Then: "So taking a risk now feels like admitting she was right. Which means admitting you wasted two years being wrong."
Maya's breath caught. "How did you"
"Because I do the same thing. Different fear, same pattern." He leaned forward. "My dad left when I was twelve. Just packed up and moved across the country for a woman he'd known for three months. My mom never recovered she became this bitter shell who warned me constantly that love makes people stupid."
"And you believed her."
"I believed that staying anywhere long enough means watching it fall apart. So I run. I call it wanderlust, but really it's terror." His hand found hers across the table. "Until I met you. And suddenly I wanted to stay. Which scared the hell out of me."