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Becka carefully inspected her toenails, wiggling them for good measure.

“Well, you did kind of ghost him after basically telling him you were thinking about sleeping with him.”

I choked on a sip of cherry coke.

“Oh, ew!” Becka wiped her leg with the towel she’d had under her foot before chucking it at me as I spluttered.

“I did not say that,” I wheezed, dabbing at the splotches of coke on my top.

“You kinda did. ‘Oh Jihoon, I want to get close enough to see those hip thrusts in 4K’,” she mocked, batting her eyelashes.

“I did not say that!” I threw the towel at her head, but she caught it easily, putting it back down under her feet before continuing her careful painting.

“Might as well have done,” she snickered. “Anyway, my point is that you didn’t reply to his flirty message, so maybe he feels like he pushed too far and is now giving you space.”

I considered this, and could begrudgingly see what Becka meant.

“Maybe,” I allowed.

“Just send him a message if you really wanna talk to him.”

She said it with a shrug, as if it were the simplest thing in the world, rather than something weighed down by a million objections, to say nothing of unresolved feelings and conflict.

“It’s not that easy.” I reached for my necklace, absently rubbing my thumb across the points of the outstretched wings.

Becka shrugged again. “I feel like you’re making it harder than it needs to be. Do you want to? Yes, or no?” She twisted the cap on the polish and set it down before staring at me with the same intensity as an owl focusing on a mouse.

My mouth went dry, and I laughed as I reached for my drink.

“Bloody hell, Becka, do you wanna put a gun to my head as well?”

I took a sip; not because I was thirsty, but because it gave me a moment’s reprieve.

Becka’s face didn’t change, and she wasn’t distracted.

“It’s an easy question, babes,” she said once I’d put the can down.

“It really isn’t,” I insisted, my voice rising slightly.

“I’m not asking you to do a list of pros and cons,” she interrupted. “I don’t need a ten-page report of why it might not work, or what could go wrong, or who-the-fuck is gunning for you this time.” She rolled her eyes and let out a derisive little huff. “I’m asking you – do you want to talk to him?”

“I don’t know if I can ‘talk’ to him and have it be only that,” I answered quickly, my voice wavering from the force of the confession, because even saying the words out loud felt like asking for something. Something I hadn’t even admitted to myself.

Becka didn’t even blink, as if this was exactly what she’d expected, and fuck it; she probably had.

“Would that be such a bad thing?” Her face softened, and I found I couldn’t meet her eyes.

I blew out a slow breath.

“Becka, you talk like you want me to get back with him, but as I recall, you were dead set against us being together in the first place. It took you months to come around, and you were bloody furious at him when we broke up. What’s changed?”

It was easier to deflect onto her than it was to answer her question directly.

Becka shrugged like it was no big deal, but her brow furrowed.

“I am not the best advocate for second-chance romances,” she laughed bitterly, “so it’s not that. I just think…” She blew out a breath. “You’re not the same person you were. You’ve grown up. You’re a version of yourself that you weren’t then. It’s like –” She looked up at the ceiling, biting her lip before continuing. “You’ve made a life. You’re not questioning who you are or where you’re going, and to be really frank babes, you’re not using him as a way to define yourself.”

I recoiled, and she scoffed.