prologue
Some stories begin with a chance meeting. Some begin with a goodbye. This one begins with two girls who had no idea how much their lives were about to change. Magnolia and Ava had been best friends since middle school. They had grown up together, survived high school together, gone through college together, and somehow managed to end up sharing a two-story condo high above the streets of Manhattan.
They knew each other’s coffee orders. Each other’s favorite songs. Each other’s worst habits. They knew how to tell when the other was lying, when she was upset, and when she needed a hug without having to ask. They knew almost everything about each other.
Almost.
At night, their windows overlooked a sea of city lights. Cars moved like tiny stars below them, and the sounds of Manhattan drifted up between the buildings. It was beautiful. It felt safe. Neither of them knew how temporary that feeling would be.
Magnolia worked as a reporter for a local news company. She was ambitious, stubborn, sarcastic, and fiercely protective of the people she loved. Ava worked at a coffee shop in Times Square and spent nearly every spare moment behind her camera. She saw beauty in things most people overlooked—a beam of sunlight through a window, rain against a sidewalk, the expression on someone’s face when they thought nobody was watching.
Magnolia was usually the person behind her favorite photographs. And Ava was usually the person Magnolia couldn’t stop watching.
There were things Magnolia had never said. Things she wasn’t sure she should say. So she kept them to herself. She told herself that Ava deserved to be happy. Even if that happiness didn’t include her.
That was why, when Magnolia mentioned a guy from work named Jason, she didn’t expect Ava to actually agree to meet him. Jason had been asking questions about Ava for weeks.
What was she like? What did she do? What did she like? Was she single?
Magnolia had answered every question. She had even shown him some of Ava’s photographs. And eventually, she made the decision that would change all three of their lives.
She set them up.
It was supposed to be simple. One date. A nice dinner. Maybe a little flirting. Maybe nothing at all. Magnolia told herself she could handle it. She had no idea how wrong she was.
Because Jason wasn’t the only person with secrets. And Ava wasn’t the only person about to fall. Somewhere between the lights of Manhattan, the photographs, the unanswered questions, and the things they were all too afraid to say…
their lives were going to become tangled together in ways none of them could have imagined. And once the truth began to surface, there would be no going back.
This is the story of what happened between the things we said—and everything we never said.
