“You’re the most generous person I’ve ever met, even to people who’ve given you no reason to be generous, and you always come through for the people you care about. I honestly can’t totally figure out why someone as good as you would love me, when I can be kind of a pessimistic asshole. But I do feel like the luckiest person in the world, to be who you want. Because I want you too. I love you too. I love you in a way that feels brand-new. You make every single thing that went wrong feel like it was just a step in the right direction, and it—it makes me excited. For life to keep surprising me.
“You aren’t what I pictured,” I say. “You are so, so, so much better than what my cynical little brain could’ve ever come up with.” My voice wavers and cracks at the end, and even if I knew what to say next, I don’t think I’d be able to get it out.
Miles studies me, his eyes soft now as I try to pull myself together. He tugs my hands up to his chest, holding them over his heart.
“That’s it?” he asks quietly. “That’s the speech?”
“It was longer than that, but I’ve slept like four hours in the last three days, so that’s what’s left in my brain,” I say scratchily. “You’re so nice and so hot and so fun and funny, and you smell really good, and the brownies you made for last night were amazing.”
“And you love me,” he says softly.
“So much,” I agree, “I feel like, why would anyone who can’t date you even bother dating? And somehow, you like me.”
“Love,” he corrects. “Somehow, you love me.”
“I do,” I tell him.
I do. I am. Right now. Every muscle in my body is busy loving him, on the sidewalk in front of my new dream house, the first rays of a new morning filtering across the street.
One of his hands pulls free from the tangle of our fingers and slides into my hair.
“Can we go home now?” he asks.
“Actually,” I say, “my apartment isn’t ready until next week.”
“In that case,” he says, “do you want to come back to my place?”
“Can we lock Julia out for a while?”
He laughs. “We’ll send her to Ashleigh’s for a bit.”
“Then yes.”
He crushes me to him, a deep kiss, full of feeling: joy and fear and need and hope. A rough, no-holds-barred kiss that prompts one car rolling past to honk its horn, the automobile equivalent of a wolf whistle, or maybe a scolding.
We pull back smiling, our foreheads resting together. We smile and breathe and touch one another and dream about the future without saying any of it aloud.
Summer turning into fall. Trips with Ashleigh and Mulder to the apple orchards an hour south. Bonfires with Julia as the air chills and the leaves blaze into color. Poker nights with cigar smoke thick in the air and long morning walks with hot chai from Fika in hand.
And even the hellish cold of winter. A new apartment, complete with gas fireplace. Bundled hikes through feet of snow, Miles and I slipping out of our clothes and under the sheets to warm each other.
And things I can’t dream up too. The ways it will all go wrong, and the beauty that can only happen in the wake.
A second act I fell into, and the home that I chose, as much as it chose me.
I can’t wait. I can’t wait for this whole world I’ve invited to surprise me.
OceanofPDF.com
38
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 3RD
412 DAYS SINCE I STAYED
Through the door, Celine Dion is bemoaning the fact that she doesn’t want to be all by herself. The chime of the oven timer barely cuts through the song, and I flip on the interior light to check that the edges of the brownies have gone crispy, the top cracking in that mouthwatering way. I pull them out and set them atop the stove, eyeing the clock.
Of course today I would be running behind.
I jog to the shut-tight door and rap on it. He doesn’t hear the first time, so I knock again. The music stops.
“Yeah?” Miles calls.
“You okay?” I ask.
A pause. “Yeah?”
That didn’t inspire confidence. “Can I come in?”
The door swings open. He’s standing there shirtless, shaving cream covering the lower half of his face, razor in hand.
“I thought I should shave,” he says, by way of explanation. “Since your mom’s coming.”
I fight a smile. “You once told me that women of a certain age love the scruffy thing.”
“Oh, they do.” He leans against the sink. “I can’t have your mom falling in love with me.”
A ridiculous chortle jars out of me. I’d actually finally talked her into going on one date with a guy from her gym. It had gone surprisingly well, but afterward she’d told me, “I think I’m too busy to date.” The more important thing, though, was that she was too happy with the life she’d built for herself to change it for anyone who didn’t set her world on fire. And I liked that for her. She deserved the life she’d worked so hard for.
“You know I think you’re unbelievably hot,” I tell Miles, “but I think Holly Vincent is safe from your charms.”
His smile deepens. “I want to impress her.”
“She already knows you, Miles,” I say.
We’d gone to her place for Christmas last year, slept on the tiny pullout couch, and eaten Korean barbecue takeout while watching It Happened on Fifth Avenue, followed immediately by Die Hard.
“Yeah, but this will be the first time she sees us here.” He waves toward our new (old) place.
Technically, it will be the first time anyone’s seen us here, other than Ashleigh and Julia. The place is still a wreck, but the living room, one bathroom, and Miles’s and my bedroom at least are functional at this point.
Even if one of the diamond-paned windows is literally being held together by packing tape, and the power goes out when we run more than one fan.
It will take years to fix up this eye-bleedingly orange cottage, two and a half blocks from the green one with the same floor plan. But I don’t mind. I love it enough as it is that I’m happy to wait.
The doorbell rings, which is a surprise. It only works about every eighth time someone touches it.
“Shit,” Miles says. “I’m late. Sorry.” He grabs the towel off the rack to wipe off his shaving cream, thoughts of a smooth jaw abandoned.
“It’s okay,” I say. “Just put on a shirt and meet me in the living room. Or skip the shirt. I told everyone tonight’s casual.”
He doesn’t even wait to finish laughing before kissing me, leaving foam behind on my face when we pull apart. He wipes my chin off with the towel. “Be right there,” he promises.
I’m not worried about my mom, or tonight. I’m more nervous for next week.
Sadie’s first visit to see me since we started really talking again.
For months after I decided to stay in Waning Bay, I waited for that splinter in my heart to push its way out, to stop missing her.
The night Miles and I decided to buy a house together, we went to dinner to celebrate, then walked home past a bookshop. Sadie’s favorite writer, the one whose event Miles had taken me to all those months ago, had a new release sitting in the window. On a whim, I popped in and bought it. But I couldn’t bring myself to read it, so it sat on a shelf for weeks, before finally I picked it up, devoured it in one sitting, and closed it with tears streaming down my cheeks.
