I take a sip of my bourbon, and then hit reply. After all, what do I have to lose?
I’d be happy to meet, I type. When were you thinking?
The headhunter’s office is all the way on the Upper East Side, but it’s a beautiful early-fall morning, so I decide to walk instead of getting a cab. I try to enjoy the crisp, cool air on my face, the hum of a city coming back to life after summer, but the truth is that even something as seemingly unrelated as the changing weather makes me think about Eliza. I can only imagine what kind of ridiculous seasonal shenanigans she’d be trying to rope me into if we were still seeing each other—hayrides, maybe, or an apple pie bake-off. Something out of a romance novel.
But romance novels aren’t real.
I try to push Eliza out of my mind as I turn the corner, double-checking the address from the headhunter’s email. I’m expecting a high-rise office building but instead the office is on the basement level of a tidy brownstone, with neat gold script on the door. Cupids Anonymous, the type says. I frown. Must be a former resident, I decide. I straighten my tie—and stop in my tracks as soon as I walk through the door.
Because sitting at the reception desk in a simple black dress, hair long and loose around her shoulders and her hands folded neatly in front of her, is…
“Eliza?”
24
Eliza
“Um,” I begin, a little meekly. “Surprise?”
Liam just stares at me for a moment, stone-faced and inscrutable and so, so handsome. I don’t know exactly what I was hoping for when I came up with this little plan—for him to sweep me up into his arms and forgive me, no questions asked? Maybe. Instead the silence stretches out between us, thick and terrible. I can almost see him mentally calculating the distance to the door.
I launch right in anyhow. “So, before you say anything, I’ve got good news and I’ve got bad news,” I tell him, standing up and crossing the reception area of Poppy’s office suite. She loaned me the keys when I told her I needed to lure Liam to a fake meeting with a headhunter… and advised me to wear something that showed a little cleavage. “The bad news is, I don’t actually have a job to offer you. The good news—at least, I hope it’s good news—is that I do have an apology.”
Liam shakes his head. “I don’t understand,” he says, eyes narrowing just the slightest bit. “That email was from you?”
I nod. “I needed to talk to you.”
“So you lured me here under false pretenses?”
“I mean, that’s one way to look at it,” I admit. I take a step forward, nearly reaching for his hand and then thinking better of it. “But I was worried you’d blow me off if I came to you directly. And I wanted the chance to say this to you in terms you’d understand.”
“I’ve always understood you,” Liam replies quietly, and my heart aches at the obvious pain on his face. Pain I caused. “At least, I thought I did.”
“You did,” I promise quickly. “That’s not what I meant. I’m just saying—” I break off. Ugh, this isn’t going like I planned it at all. “Well, here. Let me show you.”
Liam’s expression is extremely dubious, but he lets me usher him into the conference room anyway, taking a seat facing the projection screen I spent an hour setting up before he arrived. “May I present to you,” I say grandly, hitting play on my laptop, “Our Relationship Prospectus.”
Liam blinks at the screen, then over at me. Just for a second, I think I see a glimmer of affection behind his eyes. “Really?” he asks. “You put together a—”
“I did,” I say with a smile. “And it’s very promising, if I do say so myself.” I launch into my pitch, clicking through the slides I painstakingly created with titles like Who Needs Romance? (We All Do!) and Eliza’s Redeeming Qualities.
It’s dorky, I know, and I almost talked myself out of it a hundred times as I wrote up the bullet-pointed lists of all the ways we’ve helped each other and a line graph charting my happiness over the course of our relationship. But they say you need to talk to someone in their own language, and this was the only way I could think to show Liam that I adore the rational side of him, too. I’ve even incorporated visual aids in the form of Verity’s book covers and some candid photos of us that Natalie snapped the day we all played kickball. There’s even a pie chart of all my favorite parts of his body.
Liam’s face is admittedly not giving anything away as I click through the slides, but I sell it as hard as I can anyway, my voice getting higher and just the tiniest bit desperate. “I know you’ve got other options,” I admit as I’m wrapping it all up, “but I think you’ll find the compensation package is particularly generous.” I’m about to go into the details—copious and enthusiastic lovemaking, a lifetime entitlement to the last piece of bacon at brunch—when Liam holds up a hand.
“Stop,” he says, shaking his head slightly. “You don’t have to—just stop.”
My heart sinks. “But I don’t want to stop,” I tell him, sitting down hard in the office chair beside him. “That’s the whole point. I was an idiot, Liam. I should have just listened to you for half a second instead of jumping to all kinds of insane conclusions, but I just felt so strongly about Sterling and so protective of all my friends there, and we’d worked so hard on Verity’s book—”
“I get it,” he says. “I do. I know I don’t have the kind of track record that inspires confidence. But what you said about me outside Verity’s party—”
“I take it back,” I interrupt immediately, cringing at the memory. “It wasn’t true. None of it was.” Now I do take his hand, wrapping it in both of mine and squeezing. “Liam, you’re incredible. You’re kind, and funny, and warm, and brilliant. And I’d be so proud to call you mine, if you’d have me back.”
Liam is quiet for a moment. “I don’t have a lot of people in my life that I’m close to,” he admits finally. “And being around you—falling for you—made me want to change that. But if you have reservations about who I am as a man—”
“I don’t,” I promise. “I could never. I love who you are.” I take a deep breath, and then I say it. “I love you.”
Liam smiles at that—a real smile, valuable and rare. “I love you too,” he says.
I stop. “You do?”
“Of course I do,” he says, his smile turning quiet. Intimate. “I’ve probably loved you since that very first cartwheel, even if I couldn’t admit it to myself. You’re amazing, Eliza. You’re not like anyone else I’ve ever known.”
Liam kisses me then, and it’s a kiss I’ve been waiting for my whole life. I wind my arms around his neck and he tugs me close, our bodies fitting perfectly together, his mouth warm and familiar and mine.
“Oh!” I say, pulling away as I suddenly remember. “Wait, I just remembered I forgot to show you the last slide.” I fumble for the remote, clicking through to the grand finale of my Powerpoint presentation: In Case You’ve Forgotten, the Sex is Fantastic.