We drove back to the city Monday morning, something settled and steady sitting between us that hadn't been there before the weekend, and by midweek life had folded back into its familiar rhythm– my collection nearing its first sample production run, Noah's calendar filling again with the ordinary business of running an empire, both of us carrying Eleanor's unfinished promise quietly, patiently, in the back of our minds instead of the front.
It was Thursday when Noah mentioned, almost offhand, that his two oldest friends wanted to meet me properly.
"You've met them in passing," he said, over coffee, scrolling through something on his phone. "At the gala. But Marcus and Theo have been asking for weeks when they actually get you to themselves, without three hundred other guests in the room.
