The Backup Plan

Nora Chen and Ethan Marsh have been best friends since freshman orientation. At twenty-five, tipsy in a wine bar, they wrote a pact on a napkin: if neither is married by thirty, they marry each other. She forgot. He kept the napkin in his nightstand drawer for five years. Now her thirtieth birthday is eight weeks away, and Ethan is running out of time to say the thing he has never said.