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“Weird? Why would they be weird?” He sounded almost offended, which made me tense. “We’re friends, Abby. It won’t be weird.”

The grin rising in his voice offended me more than the offense had. Had our kiss really meant so little to him?

That was a good thing, I reminded myself. It would be nice if we could stay friends after this charade ended. Friends could be casual, someone you met for a drink every so often or chatted with over your morning coffee. It wasn’t like you had to share all of your secrets with all of your friends.

He was still staring at me, his grin now beginning to falter at my silence. I’d waited too long to respond. “Good,” I said, or squeaked, rather, which was unfortunate. “I’m glad we can still be friends.”

“Of course,” he said, and then Kylie turned around.

“You guys are so slow. Seth, it’s like you’re not even a New Yorker anymore.”

“We walk slowly in Vermont,” he said, hustling to catch up to her. “We need to save our energy to run from bears.”

As we kept walking, I learned more about Kylie. In addition to her crafty ornament-making side business, her main job was in human resources at a big tech company. “Working there is great,” she said. “I barely have to buy food because I just steal everything from the snack fridge. And I exclusively sleep in company gear. The free T-shirts they have lying around for every single event they put on are supersoft.”

Plus her health insurance was probably really good. And I bet she had dental insurance. Sometimes I had dreams about being able to go in for a teeth cleaning.

As it turned out, work was how she’d joined the friend group in the first place. She and Seth had been coworkers at a past tech company in Boston, when they were both in-office, and had discovered a mutual love of the local Japanese grocery store before they were both transferred to the New York location. “We’d grab lunch from there every day and made a habit of checking out the fun new snacks,” she said. “They had all the stuff my grandparents would bring me from Japan when they visited. Ooh, there’s a giant candy cane. Do you guys want to be in the pic?”

“What are the rules again?”

“At least two of us have to be in the picture,” Kylie said. “Or it can be a selfie with all three of us, but I think that’ll be hard in this case. None of our stubby arms will be able to get in that whole candy cane.”

“I’ll get the two of you,” I said hastily. “I don’t love being in pictures. Here, give me your phone.”

Kylie handed it over but shook her head. “Don’t even try to get out of being in all of them. You have to be in some. We’ll have a rotation.”

The absolute last thing I wanted to do was stand cheek to cheek with Seth, pretending to smile for the camera, but at least it would be quick. “Okay. But you guys go first.”

Seth and Kylie stepped closer to the giant candy cane, which stood erect and proud before one of the fancy Madison Ave office buildings. They posed before it, hands on hips and huge smiles on their faces. I snapped the pic feeling very, very alone.

As we continued on our way toward the window displays, the frosty air biting our noses and Christmas music jingling out the open doors of designer stores, we grabbed a picture of me and Kylie in front of a train of light-up reindeer decorating the facade of an apartment building. “I have no idea who could live in Midtown like this,” I said, shaking my head as Kylie deposited the picture in the shared album. “Surrounded at all times by tourists and a never-ending stream of traffic? My worst nightmare.”

“I don’t know, if I could afford it, I think the hustle and bustle might be nice,” said Kylie. “Just think of the energy.”

“Says the woman who lives in the hustle and bustle of Williamsburg,” Seth said. “I’m never happier to have moved to Vermont than when I’m back in Midtown. Times Square especially.”

“All the people and the lights give me hives,” I said. Just a confirmation that I’d also done the right thing in moving to Vermont. You really needed a certain kind of personality to live in the middle of nowhere like we did, a true love of quiet and trees and solitude, a tolerance for nosy neighbors and long drives for essentials and losing your power on days when a bad storm hits.

The streets grew busier as we neared the stores that hosted holiday window displays, slow-walking tourists crowding the sidewalk and gawking at the tall buildings high above them. I sidestepped them, simmering with impatience. One thing that hadn’t changed since my move: fast walking.

I did pause and tilt my head back when we neared Saks Fifth Avenue, though. The legendary and legendarily expensive department store was known for its holiday light shows, where its facade was covered in a cascade of multicolored lights that flashed in shapes and patterns along with a Christmasy song like “Carol of the Bells.” The actual show wouldn’t start up until sunset, but the lights themselves were still beautiful. This year they were shaped like a giant castle.

Seth stepped up next to me. “As much as I like Vermont, I could go for living in a castle like that.”

“It looks like Elsa’s ice castle from Frozen,” I said. “You’d probably be very cold.”

“Guys, over here!” Kylie called, her fuzzy red glove waving high in the air. “This one’s perfect.”

It was hard to tell with our untrained eyes and inability to try to smash the diamonds whether they were real, but it was close enough. The skinny female mannequins in their white fur coats and muffs and neon-colored blocky boots were staring up at the ceiling of their window, from which diamond rings and earrings and bracelets glittered on the ends of nearly translucent strings. I said, “Great. How about you two pose?”

“No way,” said Kylie. “It’s your and Seth’s turn. Come on, get in there.”

We were friends, I told myself. And we weren’t making things weird.

But I still noticed the solid six inches of space left between the two of us as we smiled rictus grins in front of that window.

“Come on, you guys,” Kylie said. She bobbed to be seen between the members of a passing cluster of people in matching bright green sweatshirts. “You stand that far apart and you can’t even see the diamonds. Act like you like each other.” She grinned like she was joking, because she was.