“I knew it.” I can hear her smiling.
She wanted me to go with her, but she’s happy that I’m getting what I want.
I wanted her to stay, but I hope she finds everything she’s looking for and more.
Maybe love shouldn’t be built on a foundation of compromises, but maybe it can’t exist without them either.
Not the kind that forces two people into shapes they don’t fit in, but the kind that loosens their grips, always leaves room to grow. Compromises that say, there will be a you-shaped space in my heart, and if your shape changes, I will adapt.
No matter where we go, our love will stretch out to hold us, and that makes me feel like . . . like everything will be okay.
37
ON DECEMBER TWELFTH at eleven twenty, I make my way over to Freeman Books.
It’s the one day a year I’ve always taken off at the agency, and as soon as I started at Loggia Publishing, I requested the twelfth off there too.
The learning curve is brutal, but after so many years of knowing exactly how to do my job, the challenge is exhilarating. I comb through each of my newly inherited authors’ manuscripts like an archaeologist at a newly discovered dig site.
Is it possible to be a zealot for editing books?
If so, that’s what I am.
I almost hated to miss work today, but if I’m going to be out of the office, at least I’ll still be surrounded by words.
I take my time walking, enjoying a surprise bout of sunshine that melts the snow into slushy lumps on the sidewalk, the feeble warmth seeping into my favorite herringbone coat.
At the diner where Mom used to work, I buy a cup of coffee and a danish. It’s been a long time since anyone recognized me here, but I’m pretty sure the same cashier rang up Libby and me last December twelfth, and that’s enough to fill me with a pleasant sense of belonging.
And then the sharp ache, like I’ve brushed up against the blistered part of my heart: Charlie should be here. I don’t avoid thinking about him, like I used to do with Jakob. Even if it hurts, when he shimmers across my mind, it’s like remembering a favorite book. One that left you gutted, sure, but also one that changed you forever.
I pass a flower shop with a heated plastic tent propped up around its storefront and duck in to buy a bouquet of deep red petals sprinkled with silvery green leaves and tiny white blossoms. I don’t know flower types, but for these to be blooming in winter, they must be hardy, and I respect them for that.
At eleven forty-five, I’m still two blocks away, and my phone vibrates in my coat pocket. Shifting the bouquet into the crook of my arm, I fish around in my pocket, then tug my glove off with my teeth to swipe the phone unlocked and read Libby’s message.
Happy birthday! she writes, like she’s sending the text straight to Mom.
Happy birthday, I write back, my chest stinging. It’s hard to be apart today. It’s the first time I’ve had to do this without her.
FaceTime later? she writes.
Of course, I say.
She types for a minute as I hurry across the last block. Did you get my present yet?
Since when do we do presents for Mom’s birthday? I write.
Since we have to be apart for it, she says.
Well, I didn’t get you anything.
That’s fine, she says. You can owe me. But you haven’t gotten yours yet?
No, I write. I’m out.
Ah, she says. At Freeman’s already?
In about three seconds. I shoulder the door open and step into the familiar dusty warmth.
I’ll let you go, she says. But send a pic when the present gets there, okay?
I reply with a thumbs-up and a heart, then drop my phone and gloves into my pockets, freeing my hands to browse.
I head straight for the romance shelves. This year, I’ll buy two copies of whatever I choose and mail one to Libby. Or, better yet, take it with me when I visit her for the holidays and Number Three’s birth.
As I wander along the hundreds of pristine spines, time unspools around me, the current slowing. I have nowhere to be. Nothing to do but peruse summaries and pull quotes on dust jackets, skimming some last pages and leaving others unread. Again and again, I ask, What about this one, Mom? Would you like this?
And then, Would I like this? Because that matters too.
Whenever I’m in front of a row of books, it’s like I can hear Mom’s loud yelp of a laugh, smell her warm lavender scent. On one occasion, Libby and I were so absorbed in our December twelfth process that, for like ten minutes, we failed to notice the man in the trench coat next to us doing his level best to expose himself.
(When this happened, and I finally noticed, I heard myself calmly, disinterestedly, say—a book still in my hand—No. The look on his face gave me the greatest surge of power I’ve had to date, and Libby and I laughed for weeks about what otherwise might’ve been a fairly traumatizing experience.)
So though I’m aware a couple of other people are milling around in my periphery, I don’t exactly acknowledge any of them until I reach for January Andrews’s novel Curmudgeon, only to find someone else reaching for it at the same moment.
Most people, I guess, would blurt, Sorry! What comes out of my mouth is, “Agh!”
Neither of us lets go of the book—typical city people—and I spin toward my rival, unwilling to back down.
My heart stops.
Okay, I’m sure it doesn’t.
I’m alive still.
But this, I realize, is what they mean, all those thousands of writers who’ve tried to describe the sensation of following the trail of your life for years, only to smack into something that changes it forever.
The way the sensation jars through you, from the center out. How you feel it in your mouth and toes all at once, a dozen tiny explosions.
And then an unfurling of warmth from your collarbone to your ribs, to thighs, to palms, like just seeing him has triggered some kind of chrysalis.
My body has moved from winter into spring, all those scraggly little sprouts pushing up through a crush of snow. Spring, alive and awake in my bloodstream.
“Stephens,” Charlie says softly, like a swear, or a prayer, or a mantra.
“What are you doing here?” I breathe.
“I’m not sure which answer to start with.”
“Libby.” The realization vaults up through me. “You’re—you’re my gift?”
His mouth curves, teasing, but his eyes stay soft, almost hesitant. “In a way.”
“In what way?”