"Okay, so then Aunt Lily left," you say. "We know this part. Airport, tears, blah blah."
I shake my head.
"That's the version you get in montage," I say. "Couple shots, sad song, roll credits. Real life? The airport was just the opening scene. The real story is what happens after the plane takes off."
Bryce stretches out beside me, stealing half my pillow like she owns it. (She does.)
"Also," she says, "the goodbye itself was nothing like the movies. No one sprinted through security. Nobody screamed in slow motion. It was worse and better than that."
You both settle in.
"All right," I say. "Class: Long Distance 101. Day one."
---
Departures, Arrivals, and The Quiet in Between
JFK – The Wrong Kind of Countdown
Airports at 8 a.m. are where hope and exhaustion spill their coffee together.
The big departure board flickered from ON TIME to DELAYED and back again like it was messing with people on purpose. Kids cried. Business travelers marched. Someone somewhere was already mad about a bag fee.
Lily had two suitcases, a backpack, and the bravest fake smile I'd ever seen.
"Okay," she said, clapping her hands once. "This is good. This is fine. I've got my passport, I've got my sketchbooks, I've got my irrational fear of airplane bathrooms. I'm ready."
She looked anything but ready.
Marshall stood beside her, gigantic and wrecked, clinging to the handle of one suitcase like he could stop her from leaving if he just held on tight enough.
Ted, Robin, Bryce and I hovered nearby. Barney came, looked around, decided airports were "too sad," then went off to "hit on emotionally vulnerable travelers as a public service."
Lily turned to us.
"Okay," she said again, softer. "Ground rules."
She held up fingers, counting them off.
"One: we are not doing a giant public crying scene," she said. "If anyone starts sobbing before I get through security, I will personally feed you to TSA."
Marshall sniffed.
"Noted," he said.
"Two: nobody calls this a breakup," she said. "We are engaged. We are staying engaged. I'm going away to become a better me, not a different me."
Ted nodded, eyes already wet.
"Got it," he said. "No breakup jokes. No 'if you love something, set it free' quotes."
"Good," she said. "Because if I hear that, I will punt you into a Hudson News."
"Harsh, but fair," he said.
She turned to me.
"Three," she said. "You remember the Lily clause?"
I patted my inside pocket where the envelope was tucked, flattened from being taken out and reread too many times.
"I'm your check-engine light," I said. "If he starts leaking coolant, I call you."
Marshall frowned. "Am I the car again?" he asked.
"You are the Volvo of men," I said. "Safe, sturdy, prone to weeping at dog commercials."
He sniffed.
"That was one time," he muttered.
"Four," Lily added, ignoring us, "we make space for phone calls. Real ones. Not just texts. I don't want to be that couple who slowly turns into emoji."
"Absolutely," Marshall said. "Voice. FaceTime. Carrier pigeons. Whatever you want."
She exhaled, shook her hands out, like she was shaking off nerves before a performance.
Robin stepped forward and hugged her tight.
"Go kick some artistic ass," she said into her hair.
Lily nodded against her shoulder.
"If my classmates are pretentious I'm flying back just to complain to you," she said.
"Deal," Robin said.
Ted hugged her next.
"Come back with a whole portfolio and zero regrets," he said. "And maybe some cool San Francisco slang I can appropriate badly."
She laughed, watery.
"Bye, Teddy," she said. "Try not to overthink everything while I'm gone."
He gave her a look. "So you're saying I should die," he said.
Then Bryce.
They held on longer than people who'd only known each other a little while were supposed to. But that was Lily: she adopted early.
"Thank you for being around," Lily whispered. "He needs you more than he says."
Bryce pressed her forehead to Lily's.
"We've got him," she said. "Go make something weird and messy and beautiful, okay?"
Then it was my turn.
Lily stepped into my arms like she was stepping into a doorway, trusting I'd be there on both sides.
"You sure about this?" I murmured.
"No," she said honestly. "But I know I'll hate myself if I don't try."
"Good answer," I said.
I pulled back, looked her in the eye.
"You're allowed to change," I said. "That doesn't automatically mean you're outgrowing him. It might mean you grow with him. Let the future tell you what it is when you get there."
She nodded fast, like if she stopped moving she'd break.
Then she turned to the real goodbye.
Marshall.
For a second, neither of them moved.
Then they fell into each other like magnets.
He buried his face in her neck. She clutched the back of his jacket. The kind of hug that tries to compress three months into thirty seconds.
"Hey," she whispered at last. "Remember the plan."
"Right," he said, voice thick. "I say supportive things, pretend I'm not sobbing alone in our bathtub, and send you pictures of any squirrels I see."
She smiled, tears shining.
"Accurate," she said. "And I send you pictures of my paintings, my studio, and any weird California food that tries to replace meat with soy air or whatever."
He huffed.
"I'm so proud of you," he said suddenly, the words tumbling out. "You know that, right? This is huge and terrifying and it would be so easy not to go and I'm so proud you are."
She closed her eyes.
"Don't do that," she said, voice shaking. "Don't be perfect right now, it makes this harder."
He laughed once, broken.
"Tough," he said.
She cupped his face.
"When I walk away," she said, "I need you to understand something."
"Okay," he whispered.
"This is not me leaving you," she said. "This is me going to find more of me. And then bringing her back to you."
His jaw clenched.
"I'll be here," he said. "When you come back."
She kissed him.
Then, because life doesn't care about timing, the speaker crackled.
> "Final boarding call for Flight 327 to San Francisco…"
Lily took a shaky breath.
"Okay," she said, half to herself, half to all of us. "Okay. I can do this."
She grabbed the handle of her suitcase.
"Bye," she said, turning away before anyone could see her face fall apart.
We watched her walk to the gate.
One step.
Then another.
No dramatic run.
No looking back every three seconds.
Just… walking.
At the threshold, just before the jet bridge, she stopped.
For one heartbeat, I thought she'd drop her bag and come sprinting back.
Instead, she turned halfway.
Found Marshall in the crowd.
He raised his hand.
So did she.
Invisible string, pulled taut.
Then she squared her shoulders and vanished down the tunnel.
Marshall made a sound like something had been pulled out of his chest.
Ted put a hand on his shoulder.
Robin rubbed his back.
Bryce slid close to my side.
"Well," Barney said behind us, crunching on a pretzel he definitely hadn't paid for, "on a scale of one to divorce, that was—"
"Barney," we all snapped.
He held up his hands.
"Fine, fine," he said. "No jokes at the terminal. I'll save them for baggage claim."
---
Marshall & Lily's Apartment – New Echoes
That night, their apartment felt wrong.
Not bad.
Just… wrong.
Too quiet.
Too still.
There was no Lily-flavored noise: no humming from the kitchen, no clink of brushes in a jar, no occasional shout of "Marshall, I can see you stealing frosting, put it back!"
Just Marshall.
And his thoughts.
I'd insisted on coming over, mostly so he wouldn't spend the first night alone staring at her side of the bed like it owed him money. Bryce was with me, shoulder brushing mine as we navigated stacks of half-unpacked art supplies Lily hadn't wanted to take with her.
We found him standing in the middle of the living room, turning in a slow circle.
"It's… weird," he said. "It's like my brain keeps waiting for her to come through the door and yell, 'Guys, plane's canceled, San Francisco caught fire, I live here forever now.'"
"Maybe save that wish for when she's on the way back," Bryce said gently.
He laughed, hollow.
"Right," he said. "Good call."
I glanced at the coffee table.
Lily's mug sat there, half-full of forgotten tea from the morning.
A little lipstick mark on the rim.
Marshall followed my gaze.
"Should I… dump that?" he asked. "I don't know the rules."
"There aren't rules," I said. "Do what feels less crazy: keeping it until it molds, or washing it and letting it be a mug again."
He thought for a second.
Then grabbed it and marched to the sink.
"I'm not going to be the guy who builds a shrine out of dirty dishes," he said. "I'm sad, not insane."
"Give it a week," I muttered.
Bryce elbowed me.
I raised my hands in surrender.
We ended up on the couch.
Marshall in the middle, Bryce and I flanking him like emotional armrests.
The TV was on, muted.
Some documentary about sharks.
"All day at work," he said, "people were like, 'Oh, three months, that's nothing.' And I kept wanting to scream, 'She is half my brain.'"
"That seems mathematically unsound," I said. "What if you both lose the same half?"
He gave me a look.
"Sorry," I said. "Defense mechanism."
He sighed.
"I don't want to call her yet," he said. "She just landed. She's probably exhausted. I don't want to be… clingy."
"You're allowed to miss your fiancée on day one," Bryce said. "That's not clingy, that's human."
"Yeah, but I don't want her to feel trapped," he said. "Like she can't have a single quiet moment in her new city without me breathing into the phone like a sad bear."
I considered.
"Call her," I said. "But keep it short. First check-in. Signal, not flood."
He nodded.
"Okay," he said.
He pulled out his phone.
Fumbled Sarah Marshall-style for a minute.
Then hit call.
My stomach did a weird little flip.
This was it.
The first ring.
Then the second.
"Hi," Lily's voice came through, tinny but bright. "Hey. You there?"
"Hey, babe," Marshall said, everything in his voice softening at once.
"How was the flight?" he asked.
"Long," she said. "There was a baby behind me that screamed the whole time, then fell asleep literally as we were landing. But I made it. I'm alive. I didn't forget how to breathe at altitude. Gold star for me."
He smiled despite himself.
"What about the place?" he asked. "The apartment. Is it… safe? Decent? Not haunted?"
"It's tiny and adorable," she said. "Like if our place had a very artsy, slightly depressed cousin. I'll send you pictures as soon as I conquer the box fort."
He hesitated.
"Are you… okay?" he asked quietly.
There was a pause.
"I'm… here," she said. "I'm scared. And excited. And I keep reaching for you and hitting pillows. But I'm here. That counts for something, right?"
"Yeah," he said. "That counts for everything."
On our side, Bryce gave me a look that said say nothing snarky, or die.
I mimed zipping my lips.
"I don't want to keep you," Marshall added. "You probably have a million things to do."
"Honestly," she said, "I'm just going to raid the vending machine, take a shower, and cry in a cool artistic way for ten minutes. Then maybe sketch. Then pass out."
"Okay," he said. "Okay. That's… that's a good plan."
He swallowed.
"I love you," he said.
"I love you more," she replied. "Call me tomorrow? Same time?"
"Definitely," he said. "Every day. Unless you're busy being a tortured genius."
She laughed.
"Talk soon, bear," she said. "And tell the plant I miss it."
They hung up.
Marshall stared at his phone for a long time.
Then he put it face down on the coffee table.
"See?" he said, voice shaking. "Easy. We're adults. We can do this."
I glanced at the Lily clause envelope in my pocket.
The paper felt heavy.
Like it already knew I'd be using it.
---
Nyx Co Office – Next Day
Long-distance doesn't look dramatic on day two.
It looks like this:
Marshall refreshing his email to see if Lily sent anything.
Lily taking bad photos of her temporary apartment and overthinking whether they're "enough."
Ted sending a three-paragraph text to Robin about his day, then deleting it because it feels needy.
Robin typing "sorry, crazy day, talk tomorrow?" three times and backspacing each time.
And me?
I was in a glass-walled conference room on the 42nd floor of Nyx Co headquarters, staring at a quarterly report and not seeing a single number.
"Nox?"
I blinked.
Amy, one of my VPs, hovered in the doorway.
"We're waiting," she said gently. "You were mid-sentence."
Right.
We were in the middle of a presentation about global expansion.
Slideshow. Laser pointers. Important-looking charts.
I glanced at the screen.
Some graph of projected growth.
"Right," I said. "Sorry. I was thinking."
I refocused.
"Asia-Pacific," I said. "We slow down in Q3, watch the local startups. We're not here to crush ecosystems, we're here to integrate. Push the partnership model, not acquisition."
Amy nodded, jotting things down.
"Got it," she said.
I ran through the rest of the agenda.
On autopilot.
Good autopilot, granted. Nothing crashed. Our planes landed.
But part of me was still back on that couch.
Watching Marshall put his phone face-down like it contained a live grenade.
The meeting ended.
People drifted out.
I stayed.
Stared at the empty conference room.
The city spread out below like a board game.
My reflection in the glass looked… tired.
Bryce slipped in, closing the door softly behind her.
She wore jeans and a faded band tee, hair up, no makeup. Comfort version. My favorite one.
"Hey," she said. "How'd the world domination update go?"
"Fine," I said. "We're rich. Again."
"Tragic," she said. "Should send thoughts and prayers."
She hopped up to sit on the table in front of me, sneakers dangling.
"You're doing the thing again," she said.
"What thing?" I asked.
"Worrying about everyone else's emotional health more than your own," she replied.
I sighed.
"Marshall texted me three times this morning," I admitted. "'Is it too much if I call her at lunch?' 'Is it weird if I send her a meme?' 'Is there a right amount of missing someone?'"
Bryce winced.
"Oof," she said. "That's… a lot of questions for day two."
"I told him yes, no, and 'no, but there is a wrong amount of pretending not to,'" I said.
She smiled.
"See?" she said. "Good advice."
I leaned back in my chair.
Stared at the ceiling.
"How did you do it?" I asked. "When you were flying all over the world. Shoots, press tours, sets. How did you manage… us?"
She thought about it.
"I decided early," she said slowly, "that if I waited for the perfect time for everything, I'd never have anything. There's always going to be chaos. So you pick what gets to matter anyway."
"Romantic," I said.
"It's not romantic, it's realistic," she said. "Romance is, 'I would cross an ocean for you.' Reality is, 'I will actually answer the phone when I land instead of texting you two days later.'"
She nudged my knee with hers.
"Lily and Marshall will either figure that out," she said, "or they won't. You can't carry it for them."
I drummed my fingers on the table.
"I told Lily I'd be honest," I said. "If he starts slipping. But I'm already watching him brace every time his phone buzzes like it's a weather alert."
"So be honest," she said.
"Now?" I asked. "Day two?"
"Not yet," she said. "Right now he's… raw. Let them settle into a rhythm. Then you can start telling them if the rhythm is turning into a pattern."
I nodded.
"Okay," I said. "Okay. I can… wait. For once."
She hopped off the table.
"Besides," she added, "we're due in San Francisco in a couple weeks for that Nyx collab meeting."
Right.
The West Coast partnership.
I'd agreed to make the trip months ago.
At the time, it was just business.
Now?
It was a chance to see Lily's new world.
To see who she was when Marshall wasn't in the room.
"Right," I said. "San Francisco."
Bryce tilted her head.
"You're going to try very hard not to interfere, aren't you?" she asked.
"I am going to try medium hard," I said. "Very hard would be unrealistic."
She laughed.
"Fair enough," she said.
---
That night, when I finally flopped onto my own couch, phone buzzing with half-finished thoughts from Ted, a meme attempt from Marshall, and a blurry photo from Lily of a tiny kitchen and a crooked window, I realized something:
Long-distance doesn't start at the airport.
It starts in the quiet.
The first night the bed has too much space.
The first laugh you share through a screen.
The first time you say "goodnight" to a picture instead of a person.
And if you listen closely enough?
You can hear it.
The crack.
Not of something breaking.
Just… stretching.
The question is whether it snaps.
Or holds.
But that?
"You said the crack starts in the quiet," you say. "So when does it get loud?"
I smile.
"Oh, don't worry," I say. "This is still the 'polite' phase. Everyone's trying real hard to be considerate while slowly losing their minds."
Bryce stretches her legs out on the coffee table.
"Also," she adds, "this is where San Francisco remembers it's a character too."
San Francisco – Three Days In
Lily's apartment looked like it had been decorated by an anxious raccoon with an Etsy habit.
Tiny kitchenette.
Creaky floor.
A window with a view of a brick wall and—if you craned your neck—half a tree.
Her suitcases lay open on the floor, spilling clothes and sketchbooks. One corner had become an impromptu studio: cheap easel, battered stool, coffee can full of brushes.
Her phone was propped up on the counter, on speaker.
"…and then my boss spelled my name wrong in an email again," Marshall was saying. "It's six letters. Six. I've been there a year."
Lily laughed, stirring something on the stove.
"What did he write this time?" she asked.
"Marshmallow," he said. "And not even as a joke. Like, he actually thought that was it. 'Dear Marshmallow, great work on the Jenkins brief.'"
She snorted.
"Okay, I kind of love that," she said. "You should legally change it."
"I will not," he said.
"You could be Mr. Marshmallow Eriksen," she continued. "Our kids would be the Marshmallow Minis."
He went quiet for a beat.
"Yeah," he said softly. "Our kids."
She froze.
Spoon hovering over the pan.
The silence on the line suddenly felt like someone opened a window in winter.
She swallowed.
"...So anyway," she said too brightly, "the painting studio is huge. They've got this whole wall of north-facing windows and I'm already intimidated by like six people who can paint hands."
"Lil—" he started.
"Hands are hard!" she barreled on. "And there's this one girl from Portland who paints these massive, sad dolphins and I think I might be in love with her, purely platonically of course, but also maybe spiritually—"
"Lily," he said more firmly.
She winced.
"Yeah?" she asked.
"You got weird when I said 'our kids,'" he said gently. "Did I… screw up?"
She closed her eyes.
Here it was.
Already.
"I just…" she sighed. "I don't want to fast-forward, okay? I just got here. I have paint under my nails and I'm two seconds away from a full-blown identity crisis and if we start talking about tiny Eriksens in overalls I will explode."
He was quiet.
"Okay," he said slowly. "Okay. That's fair. I… I didn't mean 'right now.' I just… like thinking about… later."
"I know," she said quickly. "And I love that about you. I do. I just—this whole trip is supposed to be me in the present. I can't be in two futures at once."
He took a breath.
"I can work with that," he said. "We can… shelve the kid talk. Temporarily. Focus on… your weird dolphin friend."
She smiled in relief.
"You're the best," she said.
"Tell me more about the sad dolphin," he replied.
And for a little while, they floated.
Not fixed.
Not broken.
Just in the space between.
Later, she'd tell me about that conversation.
How loud one word had felt down a crack that was just beginning to show.
---
MacLaren's – Study Group for Grown-Ups
Back in New York, we started doing something not entirely unlike office hours.
Every other night, unless someone was violently busy, we met at MacLaren's for what Barney called "Emotional Debrief and Beer."
"Welcome," he said one Thursday, arms wide, "to the first official LDR Support Summit. Long-distance relationship. Or as I like to call it, 'Layoff Delay Rehearsal.'"
"Barney," Robin warned.
He slid into the booth anyway.
Marshall already had his laptop open, a spreadsheet visible.
Yes.
A spreadsheet.
"What's that?" I asked.
"Our schedule," he said.
I blinked.
"Your… what now?" I said.
He turned the screen toward us.
Columns, color-coded:
Lily Time (SF)
Marshall Time (NY)
Overlap
Call windows
Studio hours
Court hours
It was a full-on war plan.
"I charted our time zones," he said, proud. "See? This way we always know when we can talk without either of us having to sprint out of class or a meeting."
Ted nodded, impressed.
"This is intense," he said. "In a good way."
"Intense in a terrifying way," Robin murmured. "That looks like a spreadsheet my producers use when they're planning election coverage."
I sipped my drink.
"Okay," I said. "Walk me through it, General Eriksen."
He pointed.
"So, Lily's classes are mostly afternoons and evenings West Coast time," he said. "My work is standard East Coast office hours. So our sweet spots are early morning for her, late night for me, and my lunch break. That gives us three daily windows."
"That's… not terrible," Robin said.
"Right?" he beamed. "I'm going to email her a copy. She can print it and put it on her wall."
Bryce, who'd just slid in beside me, frowned slightly.
"Can I say something potentially unpopular?" she asked.
"No," Barney said. "Next."
I kicked him.
"Yes," I said. "Always."
She pointed at the screen.
"This is smart," she said. "But if you treat this like a contract and not a guideline, you're going to freak out every time something falls through."
Marshall's smile wavered.
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"She means if Lily misses one lunch call because she's elbow-deep in paint," I said, "and you treat it like breach of contract, you're going to drive yourself insane. And her."
He considered.
"I just… want us to feel connected," he said helplessly. "I want her to know she's still… home."
"You can want that without making every missed call a referendum on your love," Bryce said gently.
He nodded slowly.
"Okay," he said. "Okay. I can… be flexible. A little."
Barney tapped the laptop.
"Highlight the late-night slot," he said. "That's where the good stuff happens."
"Dude," Ted said.
"They're engaged," Barney argued. "Let them have scheduled sexy times. I'm being sex-positive and progressive."
"You're being you," Robin said. "Which is not that."
Marshall closed the laptop.
"Okay," he said firmly. "New topic. Teddy, how's it going with Robin so far?"
Every head turned.
Ted choked on his beer.
"Oh, no," he said. "We're not just going to pivot to me."
"That's exactly what's happening," I said. "Welcome to the pivot."
He hesitated.
"It's… good," he said finally. "We had dinner yesterday. Talked. Kissed. Fell asleep halfway through a movie. Very coupley."
I watched Robin's face as he spoke.
She smiled, but her shoulders tightened just a hair.
"And?" I prompted.
"And what?" he asked.
"And how's your brain doing with not bringing up weddings and kids every five minutes?" I asked.
He glared.
"I have not mentioned weddings," he said.
"You said, 'If we ever do this,' while we were walking past a church yesterday," Robin said.
"That was… hypothetical," he protested.
"That was fully rhetorical," she replied.
"Okay, fine," he sighed. "I'm trying. I swear I'm trying. It's just… every time I look at her, my mind starts planning."
"Tell it to stop," she said, trying to make a joke of it, but her voice had an edge.
He looked at her, wounded.
"You don't want me to see a future with you?" he asked.
She took a breath.
"I want you to see me," she said. "Right now. Not some hologram of me holding a baby while you barbecue in the suburbs."
"The suburbs have good schools," he muttered.
She shot him a look.
I put my hands up.
"Okay," I said. "Here's a rule for both of you. For the rest of this week, no 'someday' talk."
Ted looked horrified.
"That's… excessive," he said.
"It's necessary," Bryce said. "Pretend this week is a trial run. If, by Friday, you still like each other without discussing the next fifty years, then you're allowed one (1) 'someday' per week, with supervision."
Robin smirked.
"I like Bryce's version," she said.
Ted groaned, but nodded.
"Fine," he said. "No 'someday.' Just 'today.'"
"Good," I said. "Today is plenty."
I said it for him.
For Lily.
For Marshall.
Honestly?
For me.
---
Night – Nox's Apartment
That night, I had three tabs open in my brain:
1. Marshall's spreadsheet.
2. Lily's shaky-voice "I'm here."
3. Ted and Robin's "no someday" rule.
They all vibrated under my skin like different songs playing out of sync.
I was stretched out on my couch.
City lights outside.
Laptop open on my lap showing code for some new OS update I was supposed to care about.
Phone in my hand, thumb hovering over Lily's message thread.
Bryce came out of the bathroom in one of my T-shirts, hair down and damp.
She glanced at the screen.
"No news from the West Coast?" she asked, flopping down next to me.
"She sent a picture of a half-finished painting," I said. "And a text about how no one in her class understands the true spiritual power of glitter."
"Savages," she said.
I sighed.
"She sounded… upbeat," I said. "But the kind of upbeat where you're duct-taping your emotions to the ceiling."
Bryce nudged my shoulder.
"So call," she said. "Not to check up. Just to say hi."
"She just talked to Marshall," I said. "I don't want to be another voice telling her how she should feel."
"Then don't tell her," she said. "Ask her."
I stared at the ceiling.
"I hate when you're reasonable," I said.
She smiled.
"Liar," she replied.
I hit call.
It rang twice.
"Hello," Lily answered, slightly breathless. "Did something blow up? Are you dead? Is Marshall dead? Is the plant dead?"
"Everyone is alive," I said. "I presume the plant is thriving."
She exhaled.
"Good," she said. "I am not equipped for plant grief on top of this."
I heard movement, clink of glass, the faraway hum of other people in the building.
"How's California?" I asked.
She hummed.
"Sunny," she said. "Full of people who smell like eucalyptus and call everything 'sick.' I'm eighty percent sure I joined a cult but they have great snacks."
"How's class?" I asked.
She hesitated.
"It's…" she paused, searching for a word. "Overwhelming. In a good way. And in a terrifying way. There are people here who've been living and breathing art for ten years while I was laminating sticker charts."
"Are you the worst one there?" I asked.
"No," she said immediately.
"Are you the best?" I asked.
"No," she said again.
"Then you're in the right place," I said. "If you walk into a room and you're the best one, you're in the wrong room."
She laughed.
"That feels like something on an inspirational poster with a wolf," she said.
"I wouldn't lie to you, I hate wolves," I replied. "Too many teeth."
She went quiet for a second.
"How is he?" she asked, voice lower. "Marshall."
I looked at the ceiling.
At my phone.
At the Lily clause in my mental pocket.
"He misses you," I said honestly. "But he's… functioning. He's going to work. He's eating real food. There was a spreadsheet."
She groaned.
"Oh God," she said. "He showed you the spreadsheet."
"He showed everyone the spreadsheet," I said. "It had color-coded call windows. You're basically running a long-distance space mission."
"I told him he didn't have to do that," she said. "We're not astronauts."
"Emotionally? He is," I said. "He's trying to map gravity."
She was quiet for a moment.
"Is he… okay okay?" she asked.
"Right now?" I said. "He's baseline sad. Not dangerous sad. When that changes, you'll get a phone call whether you like it or not."
She exhaled, shaky.
"Thank you," she said.
"Don't thank me yet," I replied. "I'm very annoying when I'm right."
"I know," she said. "That's why this will work."
There was a pause.
"Hey, Nox?" she added.
"Yeah?"
"Am I selfish?" she asked abruptly. "For being here."
I closed my eyes.
"No," I said. "You'd be selfish if you stayed just to avoid feeling guilty. There's a difference between selfish and honest. You're being honest with yourself about what you need. That's hard. And brave. And it sucks sometimes."
"I don't want him to look back and think, 'She left,'" she whispered.
"If this falls apart," I said quietly, "it won't be because you got on a plane. It'll be because of what you both did—or didn't do—after you landed."
She was silent for a long time.
"Okay," she said finally. "Okay. I'm gonna… go paint something with too much color and not enough structure."
"Sounds on brand," I said.
She laughed.
"Tell Marshall I love him," she said. "And that I'm not joining the cult."
"No promises," I said. "Their snacks sound good."
She hung up sounding… lighter.
I stared at my phone.
Bryce curled into my side, head on my shoulder.
"How is she?" she asked.
"Half terrified," I said. "Half thrilled. Which is probably the correct ratio for doing anything worth it."
"And him?" she asked.
"Three-quarters terrified," I said. "One-quarter pretending he's fine. Which is probably the incorrect ratio."
She hummed.
"You'll know when to use the clause," she said.
"I hate that you're right," I replied.
"You love that I'm right," she corrected.
"Unfortunately," I said, "yes."
---
2030s – The Couch Again
You're both quiet.
"So when did you call her?" you ask. "You know. Like… with the clause."
I smile a little.
"Not yet," I say. "This was only the first week. They were still in the 'we can totally do this' phase."
Bryce nods.
"It's like the first week of a new workout," she says. "Everything hurts, but you feel motivated. The crash comes later."
"Cheerful," your sibling mutters.
"Honest," she says.
You squint at me.
"And Ted and Robin?" you ask. "They survived Week One of 'no someday?'"
"Define survived," I say. "They didn't break up. They did, however, discover that dating each other in the actual present is harder than flirting with an imaginary future."
"So this whole episode was just… everyone trying not to panic?" you ask.
"Pretty much," I say. "Long-distance is a slow-burn kind of chaos. It doesn't explode. It accumulates."
Bryce pats your leg.
"Next," she says, "we get to the part where Nox and I go to San Francisco. Your dad gets more tangled up in his own expectations. Barney makes a spreadsheet of his own, which is somehow worse than Marshall's."
You groan.
"That's a thing?" you ask. "Barney plus spreadsheet?"
"Oh yeah," I say. "S2E3. Brunch, business, and bad data."
Bryce grins.
"And the moment your grandparents realized Nox and your dad grew into two very different versions of the son they thought they were raising," she adds.
I crack my knuckles.
"Buckle up," I tell you. "Family brunch is coming."