Lily and Alec approach me next. Together, but not, and I don’t have the emotional energy to deal with that right now. So I let them hug me. I see Lily’s eyes water and lift a finger. “Don’t. We can’t do that.”
“Right, I know.” She sniffles.
Alec pulls me in for a last hug, then kisses my cheek. He doesn’t tell me he’s there if I need him, but I know. I know they both are.
He holds the door for Lily, who starts to exit, then pauses in the doorway and turns, her eyes taking in the empty shelves. The last remaining boxes I need to pack. Alec and I don’t move or speak, letting her say her farewells, not just to the shop, but to a stage of her life—our lives—now closed.
She nods once, mostly to herself, and steps out into the fall evening air. Alec gives me one last smile, then follows his wife out. Through the window I see him reach hesitantly for her hand. See her head snap up in surprise. See her fingers intertwine with his.
The simple, sweet gesture, one I’ve seen thousands of times over the years but not often enough lately, hits me right in the feels. And the emotions that have been teetering on a tightrope all day fall.
It’s not a sob fest. Just a constant stream of quiet tears that I don’t even fully register until the teardrops dangling off my jawline start to tickle. I wipe at them, but they keep coming.
With a quiet sob, I step forward and reach for the We’re Open sign shaped like a champagne bottle.
I take a deep breath. I flip it.
Sorry! We’re Closed!
Forever.
The plywood sways gently on its white string for just a second longer and then stills. I stay still too, letting myself be frozen in this moment.
And I realize my mistake.
I don’t want to be alone.
I don’t want to be alone, yet neither do I want to eat cheese fries with May or girl-talk with Keva or Rachel. I don’t want to FaceTime my brother or even talk about the good old days with my sister.
I close my eyes and let myself want… him.
I want my musician with his long hair and brown eyes to take me into his arms and hold me. Or just make me laugh. Or let me talk about Dad. Or tell me everything’s going to be okay.
And yet, something’s not quite right. The daydream I’ve conjured up for so long, the face of my dream man has changed. He’s a little bit taller, his hair a little darker.
His eyes aqua instead of brown.
“Damn it.” No way am I letting Sebastian all up into this moment. This is my moment, and I know just how to celebrate. I pivot on my heel and head to the nearly empty cave to retrieve my bottle of Krug. I say my bottle of Krug, because Dad had bought each of us one on our twenty-first birthday. Not the Dom we’d opened on our birthday—the ready to drink now wine. But a save for the right time champagne.
Lily’s had been on her wedding night. Caleb had opened his the night the Cubs won the World Series, because somehow the born-and-raised New Yorker has always had an obsession with a Chicago baseball team.
But I’ve been saving mine. I thought maybe it was for my wedding or the birth of my first child, but I realized just recently that this is the moment. A celebration. And a goodbye.
On a whim, because it feels right, I message Sir.
To Sir—you there?
I tuck the phone into the back pocket of my jeans as I pull out the bottle from its spot in the fridge and peel off the hot pink sticky note that reads Gracie’s—Don’t Touch!
I smile as I trace the ornate label, remembering my dad’s proud announcement of exactly how expensive it was. I kiss my finger, press it to the label, then look up. “I love you, Dad.”
There’s no boom from the heavens in response. That’s okay. Like May said, I have to believe my parents would support this decision.
There’s no response from Sir either. That one stings a bit more.
I take out two tulip flutes—my favorite, and ones I deliberately hadn’t packed away yet. I don’t need both, but I figure it’s a little more respectable to drink alone if you at least pretend there’s another person in the room.
I stare at my phone, willing it to buzz with a notification from MysteryMate. Nothing.
My heart sinks a little, but I visualize throwing my heart a rope and tugging it back up again.
“Just one more thing in my life that’s not going quite according to the fairy tale,” I say quietly, reaching for the bottle and beginning to twist the wire cage. I remove it and the foil. I check my phone one last time for a message that isn’t there.
Fine. It’s fiiiiiine. I close the app and bring up another sort of male companionship. More reliable. Michael Bublé’s Call Me Irresponsible album is one of my favorites, and I play it now, the store so quiet in its emptiness that my little iPhone speaker seems to fill the space with Bublé’s baritone.
Bublé reassures me that the best is yet to come, and I believe him. Perhaps more important, I decide to take action. I open the MysteryMate app again, only this time it’s to scroll through new matches—something, I’m embarrassed to say, I haven’t done in months.
For all my talk about wanting to find The One, I sure haven’t been trying very hard.
I pick up the bottle of Krug and wrap my hands to twist off the cork the way I have thousands of times.
But the pop sounds wrong.
Because it isn’t a pop.
I frown as I realize it’s a knock at the door—a brisk, businesslike rap.
Lily. I’ve always wanted us to have that magical connection that twins have, at least in TV shows, and maybe I’m finally getting my wish. She must have sensed I didn’t want to be alone after all, and—
I’m halfway to the door when I see through the window, even in the dark, that it’s not Lily. It’s not a woman at all.
The sight of a male silhouette outside the door while I’m in here alone should cause my pulse to race, and it does.
But not with fear. With something else.
I know this silhouette.
I move slowly, not sure how I feel about his presence. By the time I get to the door, I still haven’t figured it out, but I unlock it anyway.
And open the door to Sebastian Andrews.
Eighteen
“What are you doing here?”
Sebastian rubs a hand over the back of his head and looks down at the ground. His other hand holds a cheap white plastic bag.
When he glances up, it’s with a slight frown. “I don’t know.”
I lean against the door jamb. “You don’t know what you’re doing outside an out-of-business wine shop at 10:30 p.m.?”
Without looking, I flick my fingernail at the champagne sign. “We’re closed. For good. Oh wait, you know that.”
Sebastian exhales. “I’m probably the last person you want to see. It’s inappropriate that I’m here given the circumstances. I just…”
He hands me the bag. “Lamb gyro. Just in case.”
“Just in case?” I ask, taking the bag, but not bothering to hide my confusion.
Sebastian frowns again. “I don’t know quite how to explain it. I just had the strangest sense…” His gaze finds mine. “That you needed something.”
My smile slips. Here I’d been willing Sir to magically sense I needed to talk. Or Lily to have some new surge of sibling connection. I’d been sending vibes out into the universe all right, and the person who’d felt them was… Sebastian Andrews?