The diner is a tiny place on the far edge of town. Drive a little further and you’ll find yourself coasting through forest or fields, depending on which fork in the road you choose.

I park right out front and step out into a flurry of snowflakes. They catch the neon glow of the sign above the diner’s door, picking up a pastel tint as they drift down around me. The moon is hiding behind the clouds, and the parking lot is blurred with deep shadows, but I can see that there are only three other cars here. One of which belongs to Raj, which means he must be inside waiting for me.

The cold brush of snowflakes against my face makes me shiver, and it’s a relief to step into the warmth.

Soft music greets me: Bob Dylan’s Isis, turned to a low volume. There’s a shiny metal counter to my left, lined with red-topped barstools. A row of booths to my right. In the very farthest booth, all the way at the back, is Raj.

He’s staring out through the window, his calloused hands folded around a cup of coffee. He doesn’t notice me, but the waitress behind the counter does.

“Anywhere you like,” she calls, gesturing to all the unoccupied tables.

I nod at her, then cross to Raj.

The diner is quiet, aside from the music. There’s a sleepy family clustered in one booth I pass, presumably on a break from a long road trip, the littlest of the group passed out with her head on her mom’s knee. A man at the counter sits with his empty plates pushed aside, reading a newspaper.

But Raj chose a booth so far from everyone else that I think we should be able to talk in relative privacy.

He’s submerged in his thoughts, but he blinks and stirs when I stop before the table.

I smile at him, shrugging off my jacket. “Hey!”

“Hey.” He sits back and watches as I drop into the other side of the booth. “Sorry, bro, I really thought I’d have time to pick you up. Didn’t mean to make you drive all the way out here.”

“Oh, it’s okay!” I set my jacket next to me on the faded vinyl booth, then rest my elbows on the table. “Hard to get out of the house on time with a baby around, right? You told me that at the shop.”

Raj nods, slowly making his way back to the present. I tip my head to the side, studying him. He’s unusually quiet, but I don’t think he’s upset. He sounded fine when he texted me. My guess is that he’s just tired, and thoughtful. Noah isn’t the only one who went through an emotional Kingda Ka this week.

Or - is he upset, actually?

Raj’s brown eyes hold so much warmth and friendliness that sometimes it’s hard to see what’s really going on behind them, on the rare occasion that his expression doesn’t give it away.

It’s not that he tries to disguise his true feelings. It’s just something natural to him. He’s always looking at everyone like they’re a close friend or family member that he adores and hasn’t seen in ages. Everything comes out through a bright lens that’s so distinctly Raj.

But if you look closely, you can see past it. I’m looking right now, and it’s dawning on me that he is upset. He’s really upset. He’s just holding it together because we’re in public.

“What’s wrong?” I ask, my smile falling away.

Raj, who had dropped his gaze to the table, looks up at me in surprise.

“I didn’t say-” he begins, then stops abruptly as the waitress coasts to a stop before our table. “Oh - have whatever you want, Jamie, it’s on me.”

I don’t want to get distracted, so I order a coffee and leave it at that. The waitress was already holding the pot, and she fills up the second mug on the table before she heads back behind the counter.

The music changes to a Jimmy Cliff song, snowflakes flutter down on the other side of the window, and Raj and I sit in heavy silence.

“Just say it,” Raj blurts out suddenly, his fingers tightening around his coffee cup. “I can take it, let’s just - let’s get it over with.”

He falls silent again, and I’m left staring at him, completely lost.

“Um - sorry, what are you talking about?”

Raj drops his gaze to his hands, his eyebrows drawing together in a pained kind of way.

“I just…” He takes a shaky breath, his shoulders drooping. “How much did you tell him? How much does he know?”

“How much-?” I’m struggling hard to keep up. “We’re talking about Noah, right? I didn’t tell him anything! At least - nothing about what you and I discussed, or what you’ve talked about with Melanie. Nothing, Raj, I swear! Why, what - what happened?” Fear rises in me, sending an ice-cold chill down my spine. “Oh, no - don’t fucking tell me that he took off. Don’t tell me that, I don’t believe it.”

“No,” Raj says quickly. “Believe me, I wouldn’t be sitting here, if he had. I’d be out there looking for him.”

Relief hits me hard. In my momentary panic, I was already trying to scramble together a plan to find Noah. I was fully prepared to drop everything, rush to pick up Aiden, ask Kasey or Gabby to help us strategize - get Ripley to help us look, too, and ask Kent to watch Nikita so that Melanie could come with us…

I’m glad that all of that turned out to be unnecessary, but the biggest relief comes from knowing that Noah is where he’s supposed to be.

“Thank fucking god,” I murmur, pressing a hand to my chest.

“Yeah, no, he’s at home.” Raj is still staring blankly at the tabletop. “He’s…”

I feel like Raj was about to say he’s fine, but he stops himself just short of it.

“Raj, what happened?”

Raj is now holding his coffee cup so loosely and listlessly that it’s almost as if he’s forgotten it’s there.

“Nothing happened, man, I just - I think I see what’s going on here.” Raj drags a hand through his black curls, pushing them back from his forehead. The moment he takes his hand away they tumble free again, but he doesn’t seem to notice. “I know that you talked to Noah about all this last night, and ever since he came home, he’s been so... I don’t know. Different, around me. It’s like he can’t even look at me.” Raj’s eyes flit up over my head, blinking hard. “It’s only about Melanie for him, isn’t it? Not me. That’s why he’s being weird. He knows how I feel, and he’s - freaked out, or it’s not the same for him, or - or-”

Raj stammers to a stop. With one sudden movement he pushes the coffee away, then drops his arms onto the table, and his head onto his arms.

“I don’t even know why I thought…” His voice is so muffled that it’s hard for me to understand him. “I don’t know why I thought that it was about me, too. I guess just - I’ve felt this so strongly that I’ve been projecting it onto Noah, or-”

“Oh, my god. Raj.” I reach out and close my fingers around his wrist, give him a gentle squeeze. “Didn’t I tell you that everything was fine?”

He doesn’t lift his head, but there’s a brief silence.

“I thought you were just trying to be nice. Because you’re you.”

“No, man, that’s not it! I was being serious. Noah said-”

I cut myself off, just in time.

Unlike Raj or Mel, Noah didn’t exactly swear me to secrecy when we talked about this, but the only person he gave me permission to tell was Aiden. And Noah really has a thing about people talking about him behind his back, even if their intentions are good. I seriously doubt that he would be cool with me sharing too much from last night with Raj.

Besides, Noah should be the one who gets to tell Raj and Melanie how he feels. I’m not going to take that away from him.

I need to pick my words very carefully.

“I think that Noah is just nervous, and a little raw, right now,” I say slowly. “He’s okay, but talking about it wasn’t easy for him. And I was right, by the way, he has no idea how either of you feel. So if he’s behaving differently, it’s not because you did anything to make him uncomfortable, Raj. It’s because it’s a lot for him to handle.”

Raj doesn’t move for a second or two. Then he lifts his head, his eyes wide.

“So - wait, what did he say?” He hesitates, then sits up further. “Did he say - is it about me, too? Not just Mel?”

“It’s…” I wince, trying to find the right mixture of honesty and careful wording and reassurance that I’m looking for. “I can’t get into specifics, because I feel like it should be between you and him and Mel. But you remember how I told you that I really thought you should talk to Mel about this? That it wouldn’t go as badly as you were thinking?”

Raj lets out an exhausted, hollow-sounding laugh. “Yeah, I remember, bro.”

“Same thing applies.”

Raj sits back in the booth, his dark eyebrows furrowing as he struggles to process that.

For a moment, it seems like he doesn’t believe me. But slowly, the pained expression starts to melt away.

“So, hang on - are you saying…?”

“I’m not saying anything!” I cut in hastily. “Just - don’t freak out until you talk to Noah, and hear what he thinks about this. At least wait that long.”

Raj runs a hand over his mouth, staring at me.

“Jamie, I’m fucking terrified to talk to him about this. Can you please give me a little more than that?”

I bite the inside of my cheek, searching for what I can say that will be just enough.

It takes me a minute or two. The song switches again, back to Bob Dylan, this time Shelter from the Storm. The man sitting at the counter leaves a handful of crumpled bills next to the discarded newspaper and quietly makes his exit. Snow piles up softly outside of the window behind Raj, and a gust of wind scatters flakes onto the glass.

Raj waits, watching me, a desperate look on his face.

“I wouldn’t tell you to talk to Noah about it,” I finally say, “If I didn’t think there was a chance it could go well.”

It’s abundantly clear that Raj was hoping for more than that, but this gives him pause.

“Can you tell me...” His voice is suddenly rough around the edges. “Look, I need to know one thing, and then I’ll drop it. But I need to know for sure. I won’t have that talk with Noah until I do.”

Oh, god. “Okay?”

“If it does go wrong…” Raj cringes, as if it already has. “I need to be sure that there’s no chance Noah will go back to Ralph. I can’t stomach the idea of him going back there. It makes me nauseous, man. Noah told me some more about what it was like, how he ended up trapped. He said that Ralph never did one big awful thing to him. It was a lot of little things, small enough for Noah to put up with. He said that over time Ralph started treating him worse and worse, but so gradually that Noah started tolerating more without thinking about it. He told me he didn’t realize what was happening until he was in a hole way too deep to pull himself out of. That he’s almost glad that Ralph punched him in the face, because it woke him up.” Raj bites his lip, his hurt showing all over his face. “You know what it felt like, to hear Noah say that?”

It makes my stomach twist to even hear it secondhand from Raj, so I can only imagine how it must have felt for Raj to hear it from Noah.

I’m also sort of shocked that Noah opened up that much about his time with Ralph, because he does not do that very often. But if he was going to tell anyone, I’m not surprised that it would be Raj.

“I can’t be responsible for Noah going back there,” Raj continues. “Actually, I can’t have him go back there for any reason. If he doesn’t want to be with me and Mel, that’s - that’s fine-” His voice thins a little. “But not that. That is not allowed to happen.”

Raj is asking me a question I can answer, thankfully. Even if Noah panics and takes off, even if everything goes wrong -

“I don’t think you could drag Noah back to Ralph’s place, at this point,” I say. “Not now. Not after you and Mel.”

Raj breathes out a long, held breath.

“Okay.” He closes his eyes and covers them with his hands. “Okay.” There’s a pause, and then - “Um - did you say that he still has no idea how we feel about him? Did I hear you right?”

“Yep.”

Raj drops his hands to reveal an astounded expression. “You’re fucking with me, bro.”

“Nope. He has no clue. I think he’s looking for it, now, but - yeah, he really doesn’t know. He was totally thrown last night, when I suggested that it was possible.”

Raj makes a soft noise somewhere between a groan of pain and a laugh.

“I could swear that Noah thinks everyone sees him as the sum of all his mistakes.” Raj folds his elbows on the table, his eyes distant. “I wish that he could see himself the way that Mel and I see him.”

“Well, I think the solution is for you to talk to him. Tell him how you see him. Then tell him again, because he definitely won’t believe you the first time.”

Raj lets out an actual laugh, shaking his head.

“I’ll tell him every day for the rest of forever, if that’s what it takes. I don’t fucking care.”

It’s a little cold, sitting this close to the window, but suddenly I feel warm all over.

I reach across the table and poke Raj’s wrist. He glances up at me, then blinks when he sees the gigantic smile on my face.

“Shut up, dude,” he laughs.

My huge smile broadens even further, to see him looking more like himself.

“I didn’t even say anything!”

Raj points at my face. “That is saying something, okay?”

I point right back at him. “Well, so is that!”

Raj shakes his head again, then picks up his coffee. Takes a sip of it, clearly just looking for something to do with himself.

“So,” I say, propping my chin on my palms. “Tell me how it went with Mel?”

Raj smiles again, and his eyes fill with warmth. Warmth that I recognize from Noah’s grey eyes, when he talks about Melanie.

“Oh, man. It went - just - so much better than I thought it would. I was afraid that she would think I was accusing her of something, bringing up her feelings for Noah. And she did, at first, but we made it past that.” He sighs happily, sitting back in the booth. “God, it felt so damn good to get it all out in the open. And when I told Mel that I wanted it to be the three of us…” Raj looks up at me again, his affection written all over his face. “She just burst into tears and told me that she wants the same thing. I couldn’t fucking believe it.”

“Aw!” I beam at Raj, then reach over to smack his arm. “I told you! And she was happy about the ring, too?”

“She was. She is.” Raj’s hand drifts towards his jacket, which is folded up next to him on the seat. He rests his fingers on the front pocket, the place where he keeps the ring. “She loves the whole idea. But she thinks that we shouldn’t lead with it, that we should talk to Noah without it, first. She’s worried that he’s going to get overwhelmed.”

“That’s probably a good idea,” I answer, then freeze, a realization dawning on me. “So, wait - does that mean the two of you are definitely going to talk to Noah about it? Like - it’s on?”

A brief look of fear flashes over Raj’s face, but he nods.

“Tomorrow night.”

“Oh my fucking god!” I say, at a much higher volume than I intended. The waitress behind the counter glances over at us, quirking an eyebrow. “Oops, sorry, just - holy shit, I’m so excited for you, Raj!”

He fixes me with a nervous smile, fidgeting with his coffee cup.

“Melanie’s mom said she’ll take Nik for the night, so we’re gonna talk to Noah at the house. And...” Raj hesitates, then lifts his eyes to meet mine. “I have one more favor to ask you, Jamie.”