Ellis followed my gaze.

Suddenly I knew what would cheer me up.

I didn’t even have to tell her. I just smiled.

Elle was comically bad at stealing. First she looked straight up at the security cameras. Then she positioned the wheelchair to block the view, and kept repositioning to get it perfect. Then she knocked the toy display off the counter, which made all her prep pointless.

“If I go to jail for stealing a tiara,” she said, “I will never forgive you.”

“But you’ll be a legend. The prince who stole a crown for the exiled princess.”

This pleased her. She set the tiara on my head, blushing.

“We need something for you,” I said.

“No. No way am I wearing—”

I jumped up and dashed around the counter before she could stop me. I was light-headed, dizzy from poor circulation, but I grabbed a plastic apron from a bin and tossed it to Elle with a flourish.

“What am I, the royal cook?”

“No, goofus. You’re the prince. Put it on.”

Only your best fucking friend will tie an apron cape around her shoulders and pretend to be your Disney prince.

“Let us survey my lands,” I said, strolling back to the chair. “Please roll the throne to my viewing tower.”

From the roof of the parking garage you could see clear to the Atlantic. It was freezing, a hard, metallic cold that seemed to make the air ring. My breath flew away in scraps of pale tulle. Midwinter in Maine is hell. Dante’s Hell, Ninth Circle style. Ocean infused the air, salt and grit studding the breeze with a million tiny barbs. Might as well have left the blanket indoors. I used to think of myself as tough, born in a blizzard and raised on the West Side of Chicago, but I wasn’t prepared for this sheer brutality, the way each day hit you like a kick in the teeth.

Ellis took out her vaping pen and I savored the warm steam she exhaled, the scent of sage and mint.

“What happened to the car?” I said.

“Insurance covered it.”

“Did you pick out a new one?”

“No.”

I pulled the hospital blanket tighter around my shoulders. “What are you waiting for?”

“I don’t want a new one. I don’t want anything.”

“Why not?”

Her fingers combed through my hair, grazed the nape of my neck. I shivered harder than I had at the cold. “Let’s not talk about that. Let’s just be happy tonight.”

It was right there. This thing we were skating around, the thin, fragile ice at the center of a dark pond. I could ask her. I could push us both into the black.

Instead I said, “This is our fifth New Year’s together.”

Elle sat on the stone coping of the roof. Her smile was distant, sad. “Which was your favorite?”

“The first.”

The smile wilted. “Are you sure you don’t have a brain injury?”

“What’s wrong with year one?”

“The furnace broke down. We covered the windows with garbage bags to trap the heat.”

“Then we made the best fucking pillow fort anyone’s ever made.”

“Okay, the fort was kind of awesome.”

“You kept trying to calculate the load-bearing capacity of our couch pillows.” I laughed. “Such a nerd. You got shitfaced on lemon drops.”

Elle gave a prim toss of her head, the fake cape crackling. “I didn’t know vodka could taste like candy.”

“Remember getting all handsy with me?”

“I did not!”

“You so did. God, you were so pure before we met. And now look at you.” I smirked up at her, a bit meanly. “Prince Ellis, the fallen. Getting drunk at parties. Hooking up in bathrooms.”

My toes brushed the rim of that dark heart in the proverbial pond. Elle felt us teetering near the edge, too.

“Remember?” I said. “At the party, before the accident?”

“No,” she whispered.

“But you remember wanting to go back to Chicago. I know you do, Elle. Because you still want to go. You don’t really want to be here.”

We stared at each other through a haze of breath and steam. From far away came a soft roar, like the ocean rising. As I looked up at her, the wind tousling her short hair and that silly cape till she seemed almost regal, I didn’t see my best friend but some gamine tomboy prince. Someone I could run away with.

Someone I already had.

My right shoulder jerked suddenly, playing a muscle memory: gripping a drawing pencil, pushing it against paper. Capturing this moment. But it was only memory. My arm remained straitjacketed, a wire of pain twisting around the bone.

“You were right,” I said. “I’m an asshole. You’re better off leaving.”

Ellis sighed, a wall of white cloud cutting us off for a moment. “I’m not leaving when you’re hurt.”

“Don’t stay out of pity.”

“It’s not pity. It’s because you’re the most important person in my life. Even if it’s not mutual.”

“What, the nurse? You’re mad I wouldn’t say some arbitrary word in front of some random woman?”

“There you go again. Making me sound petty and unreasonable because I—”

She fell silent as the faraway roar rose higher, and a haunting scream pierced it. I stood and a streamer of light rolled across the sky. At its apex it burst into a red chrysanthemum, a hundred fiery petals falling into the ocean. Fireworks.

“It’s midnight,” I said. Elle’s eyes lowered, watching my mouth and then drifting back up. I went warm all over, little threads of heat shooting out to my fingertips, my lips. “If you start this new year with me, we’ll be stuck together.”

“I never wanted to go. But you won’t give me a reason to stay.”

“I’m your reason. Like you’re mine.” I brushed her cheek. “Everything’s new tonight. Let’s be new, too.”

Our breath hung silkily in the space between us, a ghostly tissue spanning mouth to mouth. Something made from the two of us, knitting us together. Overhead another firework burst and then another, electric blue, shocking purple, as I leaned in to close this space, to share one breath.

And then my fucking phone rang.

I stepped back, dizzy. Sat in the wheelchair and glared at the screen. “Shit. Guess who?”

Ellis laughed nervously. “Tu mamá.”

“Let’s go before she melts down Maine.”

We avoided each other’s eyes on the elevator. But she traced my jawline with one finger, and I took that hand and pressed it to my mouth, brushed a kiss across her knuckles.

“Happy New Year, my prince.”

Her hand stayed on my shoulder the whole way back.

My mom met us in the room in full español mode. “Letting your beloved mother leave without a good-bye? What if the plane crashes?”

I responded in Spanish, too. “Planes are safer than cars. And that’s really tasteless when we were just in an accident. Please speak English in front of Ellis.”

“She understands more than you think.” Mamá gave me a strange look. “As do I.”

I got out of the chair, shaking the tiara from my head. “So you’re going home?”

“I booked an early flight from Boston. I have to be at work tomorrow.”

“Well, thanks for dropping by.”

“Vada.” My mother touched my arm as I headed for the bed. “Come with me.”

“Where?”

“Chicago.”

Elle watched us with big unblinking eyes, probably not parsing more than every fifth word. But the name of that city alarmed her.

“I can’t, Mamá.”

“This is serious. You’re not playing house anymore. You’ll need months of further care.”

My jaw tightened. “ ‘Playing house’?”

“Transfer to a college back home. Ari’s fiancé will help us pay.”

“Do you even understand how grad school works? I can’t transfer. I’d have to start over.” I snatched the tiara again and crushed it with my good hand. “And I’m not taking money from some stranger.”

“Your future brother-in-law.”

“I’ve heard that before.” To Elle I said, in English, “She wants me to come home.”

“Maybe you should, Vada.”

I gaped. “You’re taking her side?”

“Do you know what kind of physical therapy you’ll need?”