The Dare Collection 2018. Taryn Leigh Taylor

taken a shower, sorted out her hair, then had set off into the village.

      She’d seen a flyer in the piazza a day or so before, heralding a yoga class at the only larger hotel that was open this time of year. She hurried down through the hotel’s stacked levels, then headed outside to make her way down the tiers of the garden and pool areas, letting herself out at the gate near the shed that now felt like theirs—another thing she knew better than to let herself think. It was a chilly morning with a faint bite in the air, though the sky was clear. But by the time she made it down all the many staircases it took to get to the piazza that was set roughly halfway down the cliffside, she was warm.

      And proud of herself, too. Every day she got quicker. Less out of breath. As if all these stairs were changing her the more she ran up and down them.

      Then again, maybe it wasn’t the stairs that were making her feel so different—electric and intense—inside her own skin.

      She slipped into the yoga class just as it was starting, situating herself in the middle of the room and giving herself over to an easy, peaceful hour and a half of stretching. Breathing. Clearing her head and settling into her body.

      Making it hers again.

      When the class was done, she walked out, pleased to find the day a little bit warmer, especially when she moved from the shadows into the sun. She found herself espresso and a pastry from one of the cafés that stayed open year-round, and then she sat on the broad lip of a fountain. It was at the base of the wide stairs that led up to a pretty church with its bell tower, and Maya thought she could spend a lifetime gazing up at the ancient buildings surrounding the square. Pastel colors accented with iron balconies, all of it faintly weathered, reminding her of the sea in the distance and the long, hot, crowded summers that made the Amalfi coast famous.

      Her pastry was flaky and sweet and gone too soon, and still she sat where she was, soaking in the sounds of feet on old stones. The sounds of Italian being spoken all around her. There were Christmas lights strung up that she needed to come back down and admire when it got dark.

      The quiet did something to her. These hours with no stress, no phone calls, no messages. Day after day without the stress she’d always prided herself on managing so well. She’d never stopped to take the time and wonder who she’d be without all of those things. Without a to-do list that could stretch across the width of Canada. Without too much work to ever truly finish. Without a busy city heaving all around her, rush rush rushing just as she did.

      But now that she’d stopped running, she couldn’t imagine starting up again.

      Every time she had an encounter with Charlie, it got harder and harder to imagine going back home to Toronto. Whether to her own condo or some other one, assuming Ethan actually did as requested. Maya couldn’t imagine slipping back into her life.

      Melinda seemed to think there would be some kind of operatic reckoning when she returned, but the more Maya considered it, the more she doubted it. There would only be as much of a reckoning as she allowed. People could discuss what had happened with her only if she let them. The firm would be alive with gossip as long as both she and Ethan continued to work there, sure. But Maya didn’t have to indulge in any of it.

      She didn’t have to talk about her misfire of a wedding at all if she didn’t want to.

      It was almost frightening how easy it was to imagine. She could lose herself in the work the way she always had, because there was always more. She could quietly request of her managing partner that she not be put on cases with Ethan, but as that hardly ever happened anyway, there was almost no point in asking. No one would want them working together anyway, as their personal issues were neither good for the clients nor billable.

      And didn’t that say everything there was to say about the life she’d so meticulously and carefully built? That she could have a fiancé, then lose him, and it would make so little difference?

      That she could get jilted on her wedding day, run off on her honeymoon by herself and have yet to truly mourn what she’d left behind?

      Maya tried to find it in her to grieve the loss of her life with Ethan, but she didn’t seem to have it in her. Maybe that was why, when she couldn’t avoid it anymore, she finally allowed herself to think about Lorraine.

      Fickle, reckless, messy Lorraine. Maya could come up with all kinds of words to describe her best friend. Or former best friend, she supposed, given what had happened. And all the words she’d choose were true.

      But she’d be lying to herself if she didn’t admit that she loved Lorraine anyway. She always had and that was the part she didn’t want to admit to herself. Because that didn’t just disappear overnight. She’d caught herself picking up her phone to shoot Lorraine a text or send her a picture more than once since she’d come to Italy. It was second nature after all these years.

      Her heart hadn’t caught up to reality yet.

      Lorraine had been so much work. There had never been room for too many other friends and never close ones, not with Lorraine there to take up all of Maya’s emotional energy. And maybe there was a part of Maya that had taken a certain pleasure in doing that work. In turning herself inside out for her friend, again and again, with no expectation of return.

      Friendship isn’t about measuring everything to make sure it’s equal, she had told Ethan when he’d complained about the Lorraine situation—because there had always been another Lorraine situation. Friendship is about love. The end.

      She’d believed that. She really, truly had.

      But here in this faraway place that still felt like a fantasy despite the hard, cold stone she sat on, she wondered. Maybe there had been a part of her that had gotten off on loving Lorraine despite everything. Lorraine had been her opportunity to take care of someone else when no one else in her life required it. Her parents took care of themselves with a ruthlessness that was only surprising to people who’d never met them before. Melinda had never needed anyone to take care of her. She took care of everyone else and had made it her calling. It was why she’d become a doctor. Ethan, too, had needed very little in the way of maintenance. Their issues were all in the scheduling, or so Maya had thought. But they hadn’t needed each other.

      The only person who had ever needed her—often desperately—had been Lorraine.

      Maya had been raised to take care of herself and trained never to expect anyone else to provide something for her if she could do it herself. Lorraine had been the first person she’d met, at eighteen years of age, that she could care for.

      Was it her fault? Had it always been leading here? Maya blew out a breath where she sat, then brushed a few stray crumbs from her pastry from her leg. There had been a part of her that had pitied Lorraine. So broken, she had always thought. So lost and lonely. Had that been nothing more than the worst sort of condescension all this time?

      Had she done this to herself, one patronizing offer of help at a time? She’d never meant to condescend to Lorraine. But that didn’t mean she hadn’t.

      She didn’t mean to do it, but one second she was sitting there fiddling with her empty espresso cup, and the next she had her mobile in her hand again.

      It wasn’t until the line started ringing in her ear that her stomach dropped and the reality of what she was doing kicked in. But then it was too late. Even if she hung up, the phone would record the call.

      Maya shut her eyes, tipping her head forward as if that could ward off the foolishness of what she was doing.

      She heard Lorraine pick up, though there was nothing but silence. One beat, then another.

      “I didn’t think you would call me. I didn’t think you would ever speak to me again.”

      Lorraine didn’t sound quite like herself. She sounded distant and shaken, maybe. Or maybe that was more wishful thinking on Maya’s part.

      She lifted her head in the piazza and watched the clouds move in above the bell tower of